Big Treat puts it all together in debut romp

ARCADIA, Calif. – Week-by-week through the spring, the 2-year-old filly Big Treat progressively had quicker workouts for trainer Ryan Hanson at Santa Anita.

Big Treat worked a half-mile from the gate in 48.60 seconds on April 10. Two weeks later, she went a half-mile from the gate in 47.80.

Those workouts were the foundation for an attractive debut when Big Treat won a 4 1/2-furlong maiden special weight race for 2-year-old fillies by 10 lengths under apprentice jockey Emily Ellingwood last Friday.

“This filly has done everything right,” Hanson reflected on Sunday. “She’s gotten better each week.”

Last summer, Hanson won his first Thoroughbred graded stakes with Weston in the Grade 2 Best Pal Stakes at Del Mar. By the Dynaformer stallion Mr. Big, Big Treat is likely to have her stakes debut in the $100,000 Fasig-Tipton Debutante at five furlongs on June 20, the lone stakes for 2-year-old fillies at the current winter-spring meeting

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In recent years, juveniles such as Big Treat, who won early season maiden races, did not race again in Southern California until the Del Mar summer meeting.

“It’s tough when you have one that breaks its maiden early and there is nowhere to go,” Hanson said.

Big Treat is owned by Joe Ciaglia and Heart Racing Stable and was purchased for a mere $6,200 at the Fasig-Tipton California yearling sale last fall. The win on Friday was worth $36,600.

Hanson has a 30-horse stable at Santa Anita and more at a local training center. Weston was third in the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity last September and is nearing a return to racetrack training after a late winter and early spring rest, Hanson said.