After flirting with BC Sprint, Mandella likely to start Big City Lights in The Chosen Vron
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ARCADIA, Calif. – The recent training of the older sprinter Big City Lights is tempting trainer Richard Mandella into big ideas.
A winner of 7 of 13 starts, the 6-year-old Big City Lights is being prepared for a comeback likely to occur in the $100,000 The Chosen Vron Stakes for California-breds at seven furlongs on Nov. 8 at Del Mar.
However, the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Del Mar a week earlier has Mandella’s attention for Big City Lights’s first start since an easy win by 7 3/4 lengths in the California Cup Sprint for statebreds at Santa Anita in January.
“He’s coming off a layoff, but he’s always done good off layoffs,” Mandella said. “He looks like he can beat anybody.”
The BC Sprint may have a full field, led by 2025 stakes winners Bentornato, Imagination, and Straight No Chaser, who won the 2024 running of the BC Sprint.
The Chosen Vron Stakes could serve as a starting race for an autumn-winter campaign for Big City Lights.
“That’s probably what I’ll do,” Mandella said.
Owned by Bill Peeples, Big City Lights has started in the last two runnings of The Chosen Vron Stakes, when it was run as the Cary Grant Stakes.
Big City Lights was second in the 2023 Cary Grant and won the 2024 running. The race was recently renamed in honor of The Chosen Vron, the California-bred horse of the year in 2023 and 2024. The Chosen Vron was retired in March after winning 19 of 24 starts.
Big City Lights was turned out in March because of a concern over the condition of a knee, Mandella said at the time.
Mandella has two leading candidates for the BC Filly and Mare Sprint on Nov. 1 with the Grade 1 winners Kopion and Tamara. The 2-year-old filly Brave Deb is scheduled to start in the BC Juvenile Fillies Turf on Oct. 31.
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