Bonny South posts good-looking upset in Fair Grounds Oaks

Trainer Brad Cox has an apparently inexhaustible supply of talented 3-year-old fillies this winter and spring.

There was the ill-fated Taraz, who broke down in a February workout, and the 2-year-old filly champion of 2019, British Idiom, who was second in the Rachel Alexandra Stakes, her first start at 3. Now comes the next wave. Last weekend, Shedaresthedevil won the Honeybee Stakes at Oaklawn, and on Saturday, the filly who beat Shedaresthedevil in a recent allowance race, Bonny South, won the Grade 2, $400,000 Fair Grounds Oaks.

It was a definitive win, too, as Bonny South came from last at the quarter pole with a slingshot move that propelled her to a 2 1/4-length victory under Florent Geroux. Tempers Rising finished second, Antoinette was third, and the 1-5 favorite, Finite, faded to fourth after taking the lead at the three-sixteenths pole. Finite, winner of the Silverbulletday and Rachel Alexandra Stakes this winter at Fair Grounds, the end of a five-race winning streak, raced a little keenly in the early and middle stages but was in position to win before coming up short.

Bonny South, who paid a robust $14.20 to win, didn’t look much like a top 3-year-old filly five weeks ago. Cox, who trains Bonny South for owner-breeder Juddmonte Farms, sent her from Fair Grounds to Oaklawn for a maiden race, but before Bonny South could make that start she was promoted from second to first in a Fair Grounds race in which the winner returned a positive drug test. So Bonny South, racing in blinkers for the first time, contested a first-level allowance race and turned in a vastly improved performance in her third start, beating Shedaresthedevil by three-quarters of a length.

Bonny South, by Munnings out of Touch the Star, by Tapit, lacks early speed and sat at the back of a six-horse field as French Rose went an opening quarter mile in 24.30 seconds and zipped a half in a quick 47.31. Finite stalked the pace behind one horse and outside another, cruising into contention past the three-eighths pole. Just as Finite took the lead at the head of the homestretch, Geroux scooted his mount from inside to outside, and as Finite ran out of gas, perhaps reacting to the best race of her career five weeks ago, Bonny South gathered momentum, bursting past Tempers Rising inside the sixteenth pole and on to a convincing victory.

Bonny South would look like a real player for the Kentucky Oaks, and maybe she still will be when the rescheduled classic comes around in September. For now, she’s just the latest graded-stakes-winning 3-year-old filly for Cox and Juddmonte, who tragically lost Taraz several weeks ago but have found another high-level performer in the same division.