To say that trainer Brendan Walsh comes into Week 3 of the fall Keeneland meet on a roll would be saying too little.
Walsh through Oct. 12 topped the trainer standings with seven winners. He won the Grade 2 Jessamine with Imaginationthelady. He won the Grade 1 Spinster with Gin Gin. He won the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup on Saturday with Lush Lips. And if Proctor Street holds form and has any luck, Walsh stands a good chance of winning race 8 on the Thursday card.
Proctor Street has never run a bad race and has captured three of her six starts, running three times last year at age 3, another three times this summer. She drops in class from the Perfect Sting at Saratoga, where she finished third behind Grade 1 winner Dynamic Pricing and Grade 3 winner Raqiya, beaten a length and a nose.
Proctor Street, the mount of Tyler Gaffalione, breaks from post 9 while facing 11 rivals in a third-level turf allowance carded for 1 1/16 miles.
“She’s got bags of talent, just like her mother did. I think she’s got a lot of upside,” Walsh said.
Proctor Street is a Patricia Moseley homebred by Street Sense. Her dam is Proctor’s Ledge, another Moseley homebred trained by Walsh who won multiple graded turf stakes.
Proctor Street hasn’t reached that level, but Thursday’s contest suits her. In the Perfect Sting, she closed from eighth and came close to sticking her nose in front at the furlong grounds, but Dynamic Pricing dove to the inside and burst past her in the closing stages as Raqiya, whom Proctor Street had passed, came back to nip her by a nose.
“I think she just got beaten by a better filly on the day,” Walsh said.
There could be a better filly among her Thursday foes. It is probably not A Lilac Rolla, listed as the 7-2 morning-line second choice behind Proctor Street, as her 2024 group stakes form overseas grows staler by the week. A Lilac Rolla finished fifth with no apparent excuse behind Proctor Street in the Perfect Sting. She makes her first start for trainer Mike Maker.
Nanabush, perhaps too high on the line at 10-1, could take down Proctor Street. Bred and campaigned through her first 17 starts in Argentina, Nanabush hit a peak a little more than one year ago scoring an eye-catching front-running victory in the Group 1 Copa Diamante.
Sent over the winter to trainer Ignacio Correas, who spoke highly of the mare this past spring, Nanabush made her North American debut Aug. 22 at Colonial Downs and went wire to wire in a second-level allowance. She trains on dirt like a turf horse but appears on video to have breezed at Keeneland with verve for this step up in class. Nanabush and jockey Declan Cannon should go to the front, and they might not come back.
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◗ Not only is trainer Brendan Walsh unsure where Lush Lips might make her next start, he’s uncertain if he’ll even be her trainer when she does. The 9-1 winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup on Saturday is entered in the Keeneland November sale, but Walsh wasn’t sure as of Monday whether she’d actually sell or be withdrawn.
Walsh’s Breeders’ Cup contingent, however, has come into clearer focus. He said Gin Gin exited her Spinster win “even better than I thought she might,” and is on track to run in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Walsh also sends Cotillion Stakes winner Clicquot for that race, with Imaginationthelady bound for the Juvenile Fillies Turf.
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