Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint: Eddie D Stakes should clarify picture
A crowded picture for the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint should become significantly clearer in the coming days, as host track Santa Anita opens its fall meet with the major local prep – the Grade 3, $100,000 Eddie D Stakes, providing an important chance to get a prep over an idiosyncratic turf course.
Santa Anita’s configuration cards the Turf Sprint at 6 1/2 furlongs on the downhill turf course, and in the previous five runnings of the event on that course, four of the winners had previously won there.
And therefore, the Eddie D has drawn a full house. Led by 2015 Turf Sprint runner-up Lady Shipman, shipping in to get that key local prep, 26 horses were entered for the Eddie D, causing the oversubscribed race to be split into two divisions of 11 runners and two also-eligibles.
While Lady Shipman will draw the lion’s share of the attention in the first division, another standout filly represents the home team in an evenly matched second division, as the streaking So Sweetitiz meets males for the first time in her bid to punch her ticket to the Breeders’ Cup.
After winning just once from her first four starts, a switch to turf proved key for So Sweetitiz. The headstrong filly finished second in her turf debut and has since reeled off three straight wins, with two scores on Santa Anita’s downhill turf including the Mizdirection Stakes in May. In her most recent outing, she won the Daisycutter Handicap at Del Mar under Flavien Prat, who has the mount again on Friday.
“It’s been a process with this filly,” trainer Marty Jones said. “She’s had her ups and downs, and she’s been real aggressive. It seems like once we got her on the turf, she started getting confident and doing things the right way.”
In her toughest challenge to date, So Sweetitiz faces two others with a proven affinity for the course looking to rebound from poor efforts out of town. Toowindytohaulrox, seventh in the Kentucky Downs Turf Sprint in early September, won the Grade 3 Daytona Stakes and was second in the Siren Lure on the downhill turf earlier this year, and he won the Wickerr Stakes going a mile at Del Mar. Guns Loaded, making his first start since June, is 4 for 5 on this course, including a win in the Grade 3 San Simeon Stakes this year.
In the first division of the Eddie D, Lady Shipman, who has won five of seven starts this year, faces a leading California-based contender in Why Two, who blossomed on the Del Mar turf this summer. The gelding posted back-to-back wins, including the Green Flash Handicap, with career-best Beyer Speed Figures for trainer Mike Machowsky.
Two others come out of the Green Flash in Richard’s Boy, who was second, and Hunt, sixth. Hunt has won four of five sprinting on the Santa Anita turf.