SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – A surprisingly easy lead produced a surprisingly easy victory for Spinning Colors in the $200,000 Mount Vernon Stakes on Wednesday at Saratoga. Those might be the only two easy things about a mare who regularly challenges her caretakers.
“She definitely has to have things her own way,” said trainer Mark Hennig, who has learned to work with Spinning Colors rather than against her. “She dictates what we’re doing daily.”
In the Mount Vernon, Spinning Colors had things her own way, dictating the pace – what there was of it – before sprinting clear to a 2 1/2-length win. It was the first stakes win for Spinning Colors, who, to be fair, only had run in two such races before Wednesday’s.
She was all but distanced in the first of them, the Yaddo here last summer, and the second – her most recent outing – came against open company March 29 at Gulfstream in the Sand Springs. There, Spinning Colors finished a respectable seventh after setting the pace – and after throwing her rider and taking two laps around the Gulfstream track on the day she was scheduled for her final Sand Springs breeze.
“She worked herself,” Hennig said.
Five-year-old Spinning Colors showed little in four starts at age 2, all dirt sprints, but improved vastly the following year when Hennig switched her to turf routes. She won three of four starts, including two allowances at Saratoga, while racing from pressing or stalking positions. And then, at some point, the quirky mare decided she needed to lead, setting the pace in her four races before Wednesday’s and doing so effectively.
It did not look a half-furlong into the 1 1/16-mile Mount Vernon like Spinning Colors ($16.20) would make the front. Stretch-out sprinter Cara’s Time had nearly a length on her with the turn approaching before her jockey took a hold and pulled her off the lead. John Velazquez, on Spinning Colors, was ready.
“I saw that Johnny recognized that right away and let her go ahead and run on,” Hennig said.
Spinning Colors was running quite slowly for an accomplished horse at this class level. The first quarter-mile went in 25.26, and when Hennig saw the half-mile split come up 50.33 with Spinning Colors racing solo, his confidence surged. Velazquez said he dropped his hands partway around the far turn and felt beneath him a horse with a tank still nearly full. Spinning Colors, going faster and faster, ran her fourth quarter-mile in 23.10 and got her final sixteenth in a swift 5.62. No wonder she drew away from the furlong pole to the wire.
Silver Skillet finished with interest after stalking the pace from third but couldn’t come close to the winner, though she held second by 1 3/4 lengths over third-place Awesome Czech.
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Whatlovelookslike, the 9-5 favorite, abruptly was pulled up at about the 9/16 pole. Her trainer, Todd Pletcher, looking through binoculars across the infield from just outside the winner’s circle, said it appeared the mare had hurt her right hind leg. She walked onto the equine ambulance and was transported off the course.
Spinning Colors, skipping over a firm course, was timed in 1:43.62. The mare campaigns for Hill and McMahon’s Bourbon Lane Stable and is by Hard Spun out of Kaleidoscope, by Elusive Quality.
Hennig said he’s learned to let Spinning Colors do what she wants day to day rather than trying to adhere to a schedule.
“You go out and want a gallop and she refuses to gallop, so you jog her, and there’s days when she’s jogging and she acts like she wants to gallop, so we just let her gallop,” said Hennig. “She always comes up with a new wrinkle.”
Wednesday, Spinning Colors came up with a stakes win. She did it easily, on her own terms.
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