SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – There would be nothing pretty about the New York Stakes, not with waves of rain soaking the Saratoga turf course throughout Friday afternoon. Deep, testing ground blunts brilliance. But because she is not pretty good, but very, very good, the brilliant She Feels Pretty, North America’s leading grass filly, won the $500,000 New York by a half-length over an exceedingly game runner-up, Beach Bomb.
How laboring was the surface? It took She’s Feel Pretty 2:00.76 to run her 1 3/16 miles. That’s more than nine seconds slower than the course record.
“She was not loving it - not at all. She’s just that good,” said winning jockey John Velazquez, who won his fourth race on the card, third stakes, and second Grade 1 following Dorth Vader’s victory in the Ogden Phipps.
The New York marked the third Grade 1 for She Feels Pretty, who stormed to impressive wins last fall in the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland and last winter in the American Oaks at Santa Anita. She won the Grade 3 Modesty last month at Churchill – She Feels Pretty’s seven wins have come at seven racecourses – and has gone 4 for 4 since trainer Cherie DeVaux began racing the 4-year-old filly in blinkers.
The equipment change came after She Feels Pretty finished second here last summer as the odds-on favorite in the Lake Placid Stakes, and the New York marked the first graded stakes score at Saratoga, after 22 losses, for eighth-year trainer DeVaux, who grew up near the track. DeVaux, who trains She Feels Pretty for Roy and Gretchen Jackson’s Lael Stables, was glad the slow New York didn’t turn even slower.
“I was holding my breath the whole time,” she said.
That’s because it wasn’t clear whether She Feels Pretty would fire or not. The filly broke decently but did not carry Velazquez far enough forward into the New York’s first turn to avoid being stuck three wide with no cover. Velazquez said She Feels Pretty prefers following someone, and DeVaux quickly noticed that She Feels Pretty didn’t travel with her usual verve.
“I was a little concerned, and Johnny kind of echoed what I was seeing, which was she wasn’t really taking the bit and tugging the way that she normally does,” DeVaux said.
Longshot Edict went a posted opening quarter mile in 24.27, and if that and the half-mile split are correct, the second quarter went in 27.03. Beach Bomb tracked Edict, with She Feels Pretty outside both of them, past the half-mile pole and into the far turn, Edict going flat before the five-sixteenths pole and Beach Bomb taking the lead. She Feels Pretty cruised up to Beach Bomb without being asked for much, took the lead at the three-sixteenths, and seemed poised for an easy victory, but Beach Bomb was having none of that. Beach Bomb belatedly switched leads and battled back, refusing to give ground but in the end gaining none after She Feels Pretty passed her.
Trainer Graham Motion praised Beach Bomb’s gameness and said that while the South African import had made her last four starts over 1 3/8 and 1 1/2 miles, this trip or a half-furlong farther suits her best.
Beach Bomb finished four lengths better than third-place Belleza, with Forever After All fourth, Miwa was fifth, Edict sixth, and Gimme A Nother – a second Motion-trained horse, this one struggling badly with the going – last of seven. Immensitude was scratched.
She Feels Pretty, an odds-on favorite for the sixth time in 10 races, paid $3 and tied a career-high 100 Beyer Speed Figure. Bred by Payson Stud, she’s a daughter of Karakontie and Summer Sweet, by More Than Ready, and she’s looked like a star since winning the Grade 1 Natalma at Woodbine by more than four lengths in her second start at age 2. Third as the favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, She Feels Pretty obviously has the Breeders’ Cup as a year-end goal, though the BC Filly and Mare Turf at Del Mar is contested at 1 3/8 miles around three turns. She Feels Pretty has gotten 1 1/4 miles and seems to stay well enough, but also has high-level credentials at one mile.
The short-term goal is the 1 1/8-mile Grade 1 Diana here on July 12. A firm turf course would be preferred. She Feels Pretty slogged out a New York win because she’s game and professional. Four in a row, three Grade 1s, and she still can do better.
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