Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf: Miss Southern Miss a real keeper

Miss Southern Miss changed the way owner and breeder Pete Cantrell approaches horse racing.

In recent years, Cantrell sold the fillies produced by his broodmare Miss Atlantic City at auction. When trainer Keith Desormeaux saw Miss Southern Miss as a weanling at a Kentucky farm in 2014, he advised a different approach.

“He convinced me not to sell her,” Cantrell recalled on Tuesday. “He said, ‘This is the one we want to run.’ He’s been high on her since he saw her in the pasture.”

Miss Southern Miss, the winner of the Surfer Girl Stakes at Santa Anita on Oct. 10, is a Breeders’ Cup filly. Earlier this week, she was pre-entered for the $1 million BC Juvenile Fillies Turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 4.

There were 21 horses pre-entered in the Juvenile Fillies Turf from throughout the United States and Western Europe, including 17 stakes winners.

There are two Group 1 or Group 1 winners – Intricately, trained by 23-year-old Joseph O’Brien, won the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes in Ireland on Sept. 11. Victory to Victory won the Grade 1 Natalma Stakes at Woodbine on Sept. 18.

The BC Juvenile Fillies Turf should be an outstanding betting race. The likely favorite is Intricately, although Hydrangea, second by a nose in the Moyglare Stud Stakes and second in the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket Racecourse in England on Oct. 7, will be well backed. Hydrangea is trained by Aidan O’Brien, Joseph’s father.

The race will have a maximum of 14 runners. Madam Dancealot, Happy Mesa, La Force, Con Te Partiro, Sweeping Paddy, Majestic Gale and Partyinthepaddock were not selected in the main body of the field.

Madam Dancealot, the winner of the Group 3 Dick Poole Stakes at Salisbury, England, on Sept. 1, is likely to draw into the field. With Honors, who was selected for the field, is pre-entered in the BC Juvenile Fillies on Nov. 5 and is being pointed for that race, Desormeaux said on Wednesday.

Madam Dancealot joined trainer Richard Baltas’s stable this month after being acquired for approximately $290,000 by Nick Cosato’s Slam Dunk Racing at auction last month.

Miss Southern Miss, by More Than Ready, began her career on dirt, winning her debut against maidens at five furlongs at Santa Anita in June. She was second in the Landaluce Stakes and the Grade 2 Sorrento Stakes in July and August before finishing a disappointing fifth in the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante on Sept. 3.

In her turf debut in the Surfer Girl Stakes at a mile, Miss Southern Miss rallied on the turn to take the lead in early stretch. Jockey Kent Desormeaux did not urge Miss Southern Miss in the final strides, and she still won by 2 1/2 lengths.

“Keith said she was a lot better turf horse,” said Cantrell, an accountant in Dallas. “She is meeting his expectations. Keith has been in love with her.”

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