LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A serious illness last summer cost Ways and Means a good chunk of her 2025 campaign. A far less serious illness could compromise her main rival, Splendora, in the Derby City Distaff on Saturday at Churchill.
Splendora won the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint last fall, and was an Eclipse Award finalist for champion female sprinter in 2025. You had better believe Ways and Means’s connections think their horse is an Eclipse-level sprinter, and she has returned for a 5-year-old season to prove it.
Those two form the backbone of the Grade 1, $1 million Derby City Distaff, a seven-furlong sprint. Bob Baffert trains Splendora and also has brought Usha for the race. Trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. also entered two, Haulin Ice and R Disaster, but Haulin Ice runs instead in the Unbridled Sidney. Autumn Evening, too slow on her best day, would be making her first start in 14 months.
Splendora enters on a five-race winning streak. She came back from a post-Breeders Cup break and easily won the Grade 2 Wayne Lukas over seven furlongs and the Grade 1 Beholder Mile around two turns. Despite her success in two-turn miles, Baffert said he didn’t consider Splendora for the Grade 1 La Troienne Stakes over 1 1/16 miles this week, preferring to run two in the Derby City Distaff.
“A big race like this, why not have two,” Baffert said.
Splendora came close to getting left at home. She got sick after the Beholder. Nothing serious, but she had to be treated and Baffert said he missed about a week of training with Splendora, who skipped what would have been her weekly work day, April 17. She came back April 24 to drill six furlongs in 1:11.60 and punch her ticket to Kentucky.
“She almost didn’t make it here, but she worked good the other day,” Baffert said. “I don’t think it should affect her going seven furlongs. Seven furlongs, that’s her best distance.”
Splendora wins her mile races on the lead, stalks or presses in sprints. Prat ought to be able to work out a trip in this short field. But that brief illness could have longer-lasting ramifications.
Usha also has a gap in her works, and unlike Splendora, hasn’t recently raced. Her last start was a blowout Grade 1 win Dec. 26 in the La Brea.
“She’s coming off a layoff, and she hasn’t won on the road,” Baffert said.
Baffert shipped Usha to Keeneland for the Raven Run Stakes in October. She made a mid-race move, and flattened out to finish seventh.
“I don’t think she was doing as well at the time,” Baffert said. “And she kind of lost it in the paddock. We took the earplugs out too early.”
Ways and Means is elite, and despite not having raced since June 4, she’s ready to rock and roll.
“I know I’m going against horses who are in form, but this horse shouldn’t need a race,” trainer Chad Brown said. “She’s too good.”
Pneumonia ran through Brown’s barn last summer and Ways and Means caught it, developing an abscess on her lung. She didn’t so much as post a timed workout between Aug. 31 and March 7.
Ways and Means came out an absolute runner at age 2, winning her Saratoga debut by a dozen lengths. But things sometimes have not broken her way, beginning with her second start, a terrible-trip runner-up finish in the Grade 1 Spinaway. Off romping wins in the Grade 1 Test and the Grade 2 Gallant Bloom, Ways and Means went favored at 2-1 in the 2024 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, but finished fifth.
“She really didn’t care for Del Mar at all and came out of the race with a chip in her ankle,” Brown said.
The Gallant Bloom and Test came over wet tracks. Ignore that, according to Brown. “She’s much better on a dry track – much better,” he said.
Her third in this race a year ago came on another wet track. And Ways and Means, as had happened the year before, when she was a well-beaten fourth in the Kentucky Oaks, didn’t have smooth passage into the race.
“Churchill, it’s been a tricky track for her mentally because she’s gotten really wound up in the morning,” Brown said. “Both years, she breezed way too fast and she caught us off guard both times. She came here and she galloped beautifully, had been training beautifully shipping to Churchill, and both times on breeze day when we got her next to the infield, she completely lit up.
“Not this year – this year we were ready for her. Different rider, different situation, different approach to the work, and she cruised through a 47 and change [half-mile], which she does absolutely in first gear, and came back like it was a gallop. So, if I have a dry track Saturday, likely I don’t have any excuse for this horse.”
Take all that into account, and Brown probably won’t need one.
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