America's Tale ($24.40) rallies to Inside Information triumph
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - The well-traveled and vastly improved America’s Tale took her road game to Gulfstream Park on Saturday and rewarded her connections with yet another stakes win by rallying to a 1 1/4-length victory over fellow longshot Razorback Lady in the Grade 2, $200,000 Inside Information for older fillies and mares.
America’s Tale had won each of her last three starts on dirt, those victories coming at Churchill Downs, Laurel Park, and the Fair Grounds. Two of those wins came in stakes, including Laurel’s Safely Kept at the same seven-furlong distance as the Inside Information.
Brian Hernandez Jr., who won aboard America’s Tale at Churchill Downs, was originally named to ride the 4-year-old filly in the Inside Information. But her owners decided to make a change earlier Saturday, paying double jocks mount to replace Hernandez with Paco Lopez.
America’s Tale had been on the lead in each of her last three wins, but she failed to respond when sent early along the inside by Lopez, falling several lengths off the pacesetting Razorback Lady. Lopez then eased America’s Tale outside on the turn, engaged the leaders three wide into the stretch, readily took command near midstretch and edged clear.
Razorback Lady showed the way, turned back Tequilita on the final turn but proved no match for the winner while holding on gamely to be second-best in her graded stakes debut. Tequilita, the 9-5 favorite in a field of eight fillies and mares, failed to kick on down the stretch finishing another neck farther back in third.
America’s Tale is a 4-year-old daughter of Gio Ponti owned by Naveed Chowhan and trained by Bernard Flint. Chowhan recorded his first stakes victory here 19 years earlier with Deep Gold in the Deputy Minister Stakes.
America’s Tale completed the distance over a fast track in 1:24.08 and paid $24.40.
“The owner told me to send her to the lead, I want you one-two, but my filly she didn’t want to go,” Lopez said after the race. “So I grabbed her a little bit, but she didn’t want to go inside so I took her outside, went to Plan B, and when I came to the seven (Razorback Lady) I had a lot of horse down the stretch. She’s a nice filly.”
