LEXINGTON, Ky. – As poorly as Eclatant’s 3-year-old campaign ended, her 4-year-old season has started equally well.
She sharply beat Gulfstream Park allowance competition returning Feb. 22 from an eight-month layoff, and hit a higher level than that Saturday at Keeneland, coming out on the right side of a head bob in the Grade 1, $650,000 Madison Stakes.
Eclatant won her first two starts, including a fall 2024 Keeneland allowance race, and captured the Grade 3 Forward Gal in her 2025 bow. Her form collapsed in the Eight Belles in May, and after a flat fourth last June, connections pulled the plug on her 3-year-old campaign.
“I’m glad they decided to bring her back this year,” said trainer Brad Cox, who trains Eclatant for her breeder, Barbara Banke’s Stonestreet Stables. “She’s really filled out this year.”
Grand Job came out on the wrong side of the Madison photo finish, taking a very tough beat after a dead-game run. The seven-furlong contest for older fillies and mares turned into a two-horse race in midstretch. R Disaster, who made a clear lead through fast splits of 21.95 and 44.68, was overhauled at the quarter pole but still managed to hold third, six lengths out of second. Praying was fourth, followed by Sterling Silver and Mystic Lake.
Some 40 lengths behind Mystic Lake, Ragtime, the 4-1 third choice, finished a half-length ahead of Clicquot, the surprising favorite at 3-1. Ragtime came slowly out of the gate and lagged far, far behind the rest of the pack. She got out of last only because Clicquot stopped badly at the five-sixteenths pole and was all but eased.
“She was traveling well, but when I asked her to go – nothing,” jockey Flavien Prat said.
Eclatant (French for brilliant) got seven furlongs in 1:21.84 and paid $9.58 as the second choice. The filly is by Into Mischief out of Downside Scenario, by Scat Daddy.
Eclatant posted her first post-layoff racetrack breeze on Dec. 18 at Payson Park in Florida, and as soon as the filly got back to serious work, Cox saw what he had hoped to see.
“She looked like the horse she’d been at her best,” Cox said.
Eclatant sat just off the pace and took control early in her allowance comeback, but Saturday, riding to instructions, he said, Irad Ortiz settled her in third behind R Disaster and Grand Job going down the backstretch.
“She broke sharp, which helps. After that, I was just biding my time behind the speed. I put her in the clear at the three-eighths pole and after that I just started going forward,” Ortiz said.
Grand Job, regularly a pacesetter, likes to get on with her business, but Junior Alvarado managed to hold her a length or a length-and-a-half off R Disaster’s pace. When Eclatant loomed up at the five-sixteenths marker, Alvarado played his hand and Grand Job rapidly overhauled R Disaster. She was not stopping, either, and at the wire, the decision was too close to call.
“My filly, she worked, she worked, she worked all the way to the wire,” Ortiz said.
Eclatant now has won five of eight starts. Cox seems disinclined to bring her back about a month from now in the Grade 1 Churchill Downs Stakes over seven furlongs. There’s no rush. Eclatant has gone 2-2 at Keeneland, and the seven-furlong Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint will be run here in November. Eclatant came back good this year – perhaps even good enough for the Breeders’ Cup.
:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.