LAUREL, Md. – They just weren't getting to the bottom of Sunna. The filly was a front-running winner of her debut going one turn on the Gulfstream Park dirt last October, but then didn't show the same flash in losing her next two outings.
“She showed all the right things early,” trainer Kent Sweezey said. “She was fast, she won first time out, she’s pretty, and she was always easy-peasy. And a buddy of mine said one day, ‘You know, she’s bred for turf, you should try her on the turf.’”
Sweezey put Leverett Miller’s homebred Sunna – by Dominus, a graded stakes winner on both turf and dirt, and from the extended family of several turf stakes winners – on the lawn for her next outing, in modest company. On Feb. 19, in for a $35,000 tag, the filly dominated by 6 3/4 lengths.
“No one took her, and the rest is history, I guess,” Sweezey said.
Sunna’s name will, indeed, now appear in the records as the one-length winner of Friday’s the $100,000 The Very One Stakes for fillies and mares sprinting on the Laurel Park turf.
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The victory kept Sunna ($4.80) perfect in three starts on the surface. After winning her first turf try, she took a jump up in class and finished seventh with excuses in the Captiva Island Stakes. She was drawn toward the inside in a large field and wound up being pushed to chase fruitlessly in a race that was taken off the turf. Eighth-place Moon Spun emerged from the race to win the Grade 2 Unbridled Sidney Stakes two weeks ago at Churchill Downs.
Able to get back on turf for her next outing, Sunna won an allowance April 12 at Gulfstream. Off that good prep, she was drawn much more comfortably Friday, in post 7 of eight starters under Luis Saez. Additionally, Julee’s Legacy, who was expected to be on the engine, scratched, and Sweezey told Saez he was comfortable letting their filly dictate terms if the circumstance arose.
Sunna caught a flyer out of the gate and immediately opened a 1 1/2-length lead, hitting her first quarter-mile marker in 22.59 seconds on a firm course that had seemed kind to frontrunners on Friday. The filly kept pouring it on, coming into the stretch with better than a length lead through the half-mile in 45.26. But at that point, with a stout stretch drive still remaining to the second wire, a number of foes had tipped out for clear sailing and were revving up. While Sunna still, officially, held a 1 1/2-length lead in deep stretch, behind her, another five horses were separated by just more than 1 1/2 lengths in a group.
“She was game as hell, man,” Sweezey said. “I thought she was beat at the eighth pole. I really did.”
Sunna kept driving to the wire to hold her final margin, and stopped the clock in 1:01.84 for the 5 1/2 furlongs.
Saturday Flirt, who rallied between foes, was second by three-quarters of a length over Lost and Found, who was bumped at the start but recovered quickly. Lost and Found held that third by a neck over Somnium, with Les Reys, Strutsherstuff, Sporting Lady, and Malibu Hooch rounding out the competitive pack.
Sunna continues a strong spring season for nonagenarian Miller, who bred, and sold as a weanling, Santa Anita Derby winner So Happy, most recently ninth in the Kentucky Derby. Sunna has been Miller's lone runner in his own name this year, flying familiar colors. He inherited the famed Eton blue silks with a brown cap of his uncle, C.V. “Sonny” Whitney.
“Mr. Miller is a really nice man, and I’ve learned a lot from him just having horses with him - patience and stuff like that,” Sweezey said.
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