Arnold sending Kilwin to Ballerina; Echo Sound plans undecided
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The best laid plans, horse people know as well as anyone, often get laid to rest, but the plan trainer Rusty Arnold hatched for two talented 4-year-old fillies last weekend came off perfectly.
Arnold entered Echo Sound and Kilwin in the Regret Stakes on Saturday at Monmouth Park and the Twin Bridges Stakes on Sunday at Ellis Park. He sent Echo Sound to New Jersey, and in her first race since September, she won the Regret by 7 1/2 lengths.
Kilwin ran at Ellis, facing stronger opposition than Echo Sound while racing for the first time in more than 10 months, and captured the Twin Bridges by 2 1/4 lengths.
“For a change, everything went the right way,” Arnold said.
Echo Sound now is a four-time stakes winner whose high-water mark came last summer at Saratoga with a 4 1/4-length victory in the Grade 3 Victory Ride, but her 3-year-old campaign ended with a pair of clunkers.
“We were just trying to find a spot to come back in and if she was going to be the same horse she was,” Arnold said. “Hopefully she’ll move forward.”
Echo Sound returned Tuesday morning to Arnold’s stable at Keeneland. Arnold said he would evaluate the filly’s training for a week or so before getting with owner Gabriel Duignan and finding another spot.
Echo Sound finished sixth last August as the 3-2 favorite in the Grade 1 Test, a race Kilwin won at 6-1. Kilwin made her first five starts on grass, and is a very good turf horse, too, but her form hit a new level when Arnold moved Kilwin to dirt in the Leslie’s Lady two Junes ago at Churchill Downs. She won that race with a 96 Beyer Speed Figure, the same number she got in the Test, and in running her dirt record to 3 for 3 in the Twin Bridges, Kilwin got a 93. Cash Call and Evanescence, the second- and third-place finishers at Ellis, both rate as low-level graded stakes dirt sprinters.
“She beat a couple good fillies, finished off full of run. I think she’s back where she was before,” Arnold said.
Kilwin stalked the pace from last of six, rating sweetly, and got the last of her six furlongs in 12.05, almost a half-second faster than any of her rivals. Stalk-and-pounce – that’s Kilwin’s game, and she’ll take her game back to Saratoga, Arnold said, for the Grade 1 Ballerina on Aug. 29. Hind-end issues that took her out of training late last summer and again late this winter appear to be a thing of the past. Arnold and the filly’s owners, BBN Racing and Rick Howard, can start making plans again.
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