OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The clean, albeit slightly wet, silks worn by jockey Dylan Davis told the story of Saturday’s Top Flight Stakes at Aqueduct.
On a dreary April day that felt more like February and with Aqueduct’s main track a sea of slop, there was not a speck of dirt on Davis after he guided Headline Numbers to a front-running, 4 1/2-length victory over odds-on favorite Alpine Princess in the $139,500 Top Flight.
In a scratch-reduced field of four, Headline Number assumed control of the race going into the first turn, set realistic fractions while being stalked by Alpine Princess before running away from that one in the lane.
“Instructions were to go to the lead, that’s what we did,” Davis said. “I had to stay with the pony because she was really anxious and high energy, very energetic. She broke well, couple of nudges out of there she took right to it and jumped to the front and took [control] early. She was really just loving the slop, she handled it great.”
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It was trainer Chad Brown who gave those instructions to go to the front, tactics that had Headline Numbers had not previously employed. Brown admitted earlier in the week that Headline Numbers had been a bit of a disappointment following her 11 3/4-length debut win her last July so perhaps a change of strategy was in order.
The disappointment Saturday was Alpine Princess, who was sent off the 1-2 favorite following a fourth-place finish to Thorpedo Anna in the Grade 2 Azeri. She hadn’t run particularly well over a wet surface on two previous tries, but that could have been the competition more than surface.
Saturday, she took up a stalking position outside Headline Numbers but wasn’t good enough to go by her, settling for second, 4 3/4 lengths in front of Elliptic. Miss Spitfire was last of four. Catherine Wheel and Fade to Grey both scratched.
“I don’t think she’s been in the best form her last few races,” Florent Geroux, rider of Alpine Princess, said. “I feel like the winner had a little bit of a tactical advantage. She broke on the lead, I was tracking [Davis] at the beginning and when I finally got a little bit of a clear run down the backside and tried to make a race out of it the winner was just way superior.”
Headline Numbers, a 4-year-old daughter of Gun Runner owned by Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stables, covered the 1 1/8 miles in the slop in 1:51.20 and returned $4.90 as the second choice.
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