Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies: Eight graded winners in field of 12

The winners of all four Breeders’ Cup challenge races for the Grade 1, $2 million Juvenile Fillies were among the 12 horses pre-entered in the mile and a sixteenth race on Monday. For taking Win and You’re In events, Untapable (Pocahontas), Secret Compass (Chandelier), My Conquestadory (Alcibiades), and Artemis Agrotera (Frizette), each had their $20,000 pre-entry fee waived. The horses will also have a second $20,000 fee waived when final entries for the race are taken Oct. 28.

The challenge winners were among eight graded winners pre-entered in the Juvenile Fillies, which will be run Nov. 2 at Santa Anita. Others are Sweet Reason and She’s a Tiger, who bring the total count of Grade 1 winners pre-entered to five, and Concave and Designer Legs, who like Untapable have each won Grade 2 races. Adding further depth to the prospective field is Scandalous Act, who recently completed a sweep of the Florida Stallion Stakes series just as Awesome Feather did before winning the Juvenile Fillies in 2010.

But one chief Juvenile Fillies player, My Conquestadory, is not expected to start. Trainer Mark Casse said she is instead being pointed for the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf. My Conquestadory was one of four fillies cross-entered in the grass race, with the turf also being the first preference for Dancing House. The Juvenile Fillies Turf is the second preference for both Rosalind and Ria Antonia.

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Sweet Reason could go favored in the Juvenile Fillies after establishing herself as the divisional leader during Saratoga, when she won the Grade 1 Spinaway by more than five lengths Sept. 1. She has since finished a troubled second to Artemis Agrotera in the Frizette. Sweet Reason on Tuesday night travelled to Santa Anita, where her trainer, Leah Gyarmati, plans to work her six or seven days before the Juvenile Fillies.

“We’re coming early more for my sake than for her,” the New York-based Gyarmati said Tuesday from Santa Anita. “She could probably ship [on top of the race].

“She just takes everything in stride. Nothing bothers her.”

Gyarmati said Sweet Reason was able to catch a direct flight from Newark, N.J., to Los Angeles.

“That was cool,” she said. “We wanted to go early, and this worked out well.”

Gyarmati said Alex Solis has the mount in the Juvenile Fillies. Sweet Reason will be the first Breeders’ Cup starter for Gyarmati. Sweet Reason is owned by Treadway Racing Stable.

The starters in the Juvenile Fillies will race without Lasix in a Breeders’ Cup policy in place for all 2-year-old stakes. With the exception of Dancing House, each of the pre-entrants raced on the diuretic in their last starts.