Beholder launches 5-year-old season in Santa Lucia
ARCADIA, Calif. – The start of the 2015 season for two-time champion Beholder is the same as her 2014 campaign.
Now 5, Beholder has been supplemented to Friday’s $75,000 Santa Lucia Stakes for fillies and mares at Santa Anita, a restricted race at 1 1/16 miles on dirt and a race she won last year. Trainer Richard Mandella is using the Santa Lucia as a prep for the $300,000 Vanity Stakes on May 9.
It is the end of the season that Mandella and owner B. Wayne Hughes hope will be different this year. Last fall, Beholder won the Grade 1 Zenyatta Stakes on Sept. 27 but missed the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Santa Anita on Oct. 31 because of illness. Beholder won the 2013 BC Distaff at Santa Anita, and the same race at Keeneland on Oct. 30 is a long-term goal.
The Santa Lucia is restricted to nonwinners of a graded stakes at a mile or longer in 2015. The race drew a field of eight, including Tiz Midnight, the winner of the Grade 2 Bayakoa Stakes at Los Alamitos last December, and Uzziel, who was second in the Grade 2 Santa Maria Stakes on Feb. 14.
Santa Lucia, race 6
KEY CONTENDERS
Beholder (Last 3 Beyers: 99-101-98)
◗ Beholder was the champion 2-year-old filly of 2012 and champion 3-year-old filly of 2013. She made only three starts last year. After winning the Santa Lucia Stakes by 5 1/4 lengths, she was fourth in the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps Stakes at Belmont Park last June, emerging from the race with a leg injury believed to be caused when she was kicked by a rival.
◗ Beholder was scheduled to be sold at auction in Kentucky last November, but Hughes reversed the decision in favor of a 2015 campaign. Beholder resumed training with Mandella in January and has worked steadily in recent weeks.
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She worked seven furlongs in 1:26.80 on April 2 and three furlongs in 38.80 seconds Tuesday.
“She’s ready to start,” Mandella said. “I don’t think she’s at her best yet. I think she’ll run very well.”
◗ Beholder was supplemented to the Santa Lucia because Mandella feared that if she was part of the original nomination list, the race would not draw sufficient entries. Last weekend, he defended the decision to supplement Beholder for $1,500 to the Santa Lucia on the day entries were drawn.
“I had no other place to run other than this,” he said, referring to Southern California options.
DRF FORMULATOR FACT: No. 6 Beholder. Trainer Richard Mandella is 7-4-0-2 with a $2.77 ROI over the past five years in dirt routes following a layoff of 150 days or more, including Beholder’s win in this race last year off a 170-day layoff. Click for more details. – Mike Hogan
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Tiz Midnight (Last 3 Beyers: 67-93-87)
◗ Tiz Midnight was second to Beholder in the Zenyatta Stakes and later sixth in the BC Distaff last fall. She followed that with a win in the Bayakoa but a disappointing sixth in the Paseana Stakes in January.
“She’s a little light and tailed off,” trainer Bob Baffert said. “She’s slowly coming back.”
◗ Baffert said he expected Beholder to be supplemented to the Santa Lucia and is not ducking the former champion.
“I knew that good mare was going to be in there,” Baffert said. “You’ve got to run.”
DRF FORMULATOR FACT: No. 4 Uzziel. Trainer Keith Desormeaux is 17-6-1-3 with a $3.43 ROI over the past two years in dirt routes in the third start following a layoff. Click for more details. – Mike Hogan