Santa Anita: Marketing Mix easy winner of Rodeo Drive

ARCADIA, Calif.- Marketing Mix has won races as lucrative as Saturday’s $250,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes at Santa Anita, but none as important.

By winning the Grade 1 Rodeo Drive, Marketing Mix has firmly joined the list of contenders for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 2. She earned a fees-paid berth to the race with her comfortable victory in the race over 1 1/4 miles on turf.

“She makes you high on her,” said winning trainer Tom Proctor. “She’s handled everything we ever done to her.”

Ridden by Garrett Gomez, Marketing Mix ($4) closed from sixth in a field of 13 to win by 2 1/4 lengths over Nereid. Stormy Lucy finished third.

Marketing Mix had an ideal trip. She was well behind a speed duel between the Proctor-trained Vivo Per Lei and Let’s Go Cheyenne, and moved closer through the final half-mile.

The presence of Vivo Per Lei in a speed duel surprised Proctor.

“I thought we’d be on that horse’s flank,” Proctor said of Vivo Per Lei. “I didn’t think she’d be on her throat latch.”

Marketing Mix has won 8 of 15 starts and $1,299,518 for Glen Hill Farms. Second in the Grade 1 Beverly D Stakes at Arlington Park in August,

Marketing Mix has won three stakes this year. She won two Grade 2 stakes at Woodbine earlier this year – the Dance Smartly and Nassau.
In 2011, she won the $250,000 Wonder Where Stakes for Ontario-breds and was later second in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland last October.