Breeders’ Cup: Lush Lips to be cross-entered in Filly and Mare Turf, Mile
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Lush Lips will be cross-entered in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf and the Breeders’ Cup Mile, trainer Brendan Walsh said Friday.
Connections lean toward running in the Filly and Mare Turf over 1 3/16 miles, Walsh said, but want to have a look at the prospective field in both races before making a final decision.
Lush Lips has yet to race beyond 1 1/8 miles but won the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup over that trip last fall at Keeneland. Lush Lips missed a good chunk of this, her 4-year-old season with an unspecified, nagging injury, but after a shock defeat in her Ellis Park comeback race in August, she got back on song in the Grade 1 First Lady on Oct. 3 at Keeneland.
Granted, Lush Lips took a brutal beat in the one-mile First Lady, bursting to the lead in upper stretch with a crackling turn of foot, but then becoming distracted and losing focus, only regaining her concentration after victorious Classic Q had passed her just before the finish. Lush Lips was gaining again at the wire but re-rallied too late.
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Lush Lips came out of the race in good order, Walsh said, and her trainer believes she can legitimately contend in either Breeders’ Cup race.
Walsh also plans to pre-enter Expensive Queen in the Filly and Mare Turf. Expensive Queen dead-heated for first in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley this past April at Keeneland but didn’t race again until the First Lady, where she ran into traffic trouble and never had much chance to find her best stride.
Friday, as documented by Daily Racing Form’s Mike Welsch in his daily Breeders’ Cup Clocker Report, Walsh sent unbeaten 2-year-old filly Emphatic out for a comfortable half-mile drill, her first since winning the Grade 1 Alcibiades on Oct. 2 at Keeneland. With Alcibiades runner-up Summer Starlet out for the year, Emphatic, who won the two-turn Sorority at Monmouth Park after a debut sprint win at Colonial Downs, will vie for favoritism in the BC Juvenile Fillies with the unbeaten Bob Baffert-trained filly Miss Monica.
Emphatic clocked 48.80 seconds in what Walsh described as a mere maintenance drill.
“She worked really nice. We just want to keep her ticking over between now and then. She’s really doing great, really moving forward right now,” Walsh said.
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