Bless the Broken wins Ladies Turf, finding first graded-stakes victory in turf debut
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FRANKLIN, Ky. – Last fall, as a 3-year-old at the time and third-place finisher in the 2025 Kentucky Oaks, Bless the Broken sold at auction for a tidy sum of $750,000. She moved into the barn of Brad Cox, one of the most prolific graded-stakes winning trainers of the modern era, and Cox set about getting the filly her first graded-stakes victory.
Bless the Broken finished second in the Grade 1 Beholder Mile, third in the Grade 1 La Troienne, and was a distant second in the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps. She seemed to have found an easier spot to fill the hole in her resume on July 24 in the Grade 2 Shuvee, but clunked, a flat fourth.
Whereupon Cox gave up … on dirt racing. First work back from the Shuvee and Bless the Broken showed up on the turf course at the Oklahoma training track at Saratoga. Cox liked what he saw, kept her breezing on turf, and on Saturday at Kentucky Downs, making her grass debut, Bless the Broken won the Grade 2, $1.5 million Ladies Turf by two lengths.
Mission accomplished on a timely surface switch.
You could tell, watching some of those works on video, that Bless the Broken had taken to the grass. She doesn’t have what one might consider a classic turf stride, but when Cox’s exercise riders let her start to rip on the gallop-out, Bless the Broken responded. She ran to those drills Saturday under Florent Geroux, collaring pacesetting Buttercream Babe inside the final furlong and pushing out to a convincing victory.
“She always tries. The turf today was the big question mark,” said Geroux, who had ridden the filly three times previously.
Buttercream Babe taking the early lead – that came as a major surprise. Classic Q, the obvious favorite, a confirmed front-runner who had won the Grade 1 Just a Game in her most recent start, looked on paper like the controlling speed in the Ladies Turf. But her odds drifted late in the wagering from 4-5 up to 7-5, a warning rumble, and Classic Q, after breaking moderately, could not keep pace with Buttercream Babe in the early stages.
Classic Q actually looked comfortable tracking Buttercream Babe through a fairly slow pace, but she wins her races using her speed, not a late kick. Bless the Broken, meanwhile, broke decently from the rail to take up a position in the second flight, and Geroux made an early move, before the far turn, to get her off the rail and out into the clear. Bless the Broken held her position going about four paths off the rail around the bend, Rashmi pressing up outside her and briefly poking her head in front of Bless the Broken. But Bless the Broken gathered herself at the three-sixteenths pole, and, just like in her breezes, did all her best work at the end.
The winner got her mile over firm going in 1:34.80 and paid $48.15 for a $5 base bet. Buttercream Babe stayed on just slightly better than Classic Q, who, to her credit, missed second by only a head while failing to run her race. Vive Veuve, the horse who took all the late action, going off a surprisingly low 9-5, could do nothing with a favorable ground-saving trip and finished sixth.
Cox trains Bless the Broken for Qatar Racing, Mountmellick Farm, and Hunter Valley Farm. Bless the Broken is a daughter of Laoban and The Nightingale, by Tapit, and she finally is a graded-stakes winner – on turf.
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