Broadway Girls springs 16-1 upset in Blue Norther
ARCADIA, Calif. – Longshot front-runner Broadway Girls and jockey Edwin Maldonado scored a $35.80 upset in the $103,000 Blue Norther Stakes on Friday at Santa Anita while 9-5 favorite G Laurie misfired and finished last in the turf mile for 2-year-old fillies.
Doug O’Neill trains Broadway Girls and Blue Norther entrant Ami Please, who typically employs the same style as her stablemate, but the front-runners would not go head-and-head. “Ami Please is equally as fast, but only one horse [could be] on the lead,” O’Neill said. “You can’t both be there.”
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The plan was to ration Ami Please from post 10, while Broadway Girls and Maldonado scooted to the lead from post 6. The winner set comfortable fractions (46.98 and 1:12.07) and kept running. Her margin of victory over runner-up Manhattan Jungle was 1 1/2 lengths. Ami Please finished third, a half-length back. “I have to tear up my exacta ticket,” O’Neill cracked.
Despite a pedigree that leans toward dirt, O’Neill said the decision to switch Broadway Girls, by Army Mule, to turf was due to her aggressive style. “She’s got so much speed, and she also has a lot of anxious energy,” O’Neill said. “The turf, generally you don’t get the speed duels that you do in dirt races.”
This was especially true in the Blue Norther, when the main pace rival for Broadway Girls was rated.
Broadway Girls is now 2 for 2 in turf routes, having won a maiden turf mile last out at Del Mar. She is 2 for 4 in her career. The final time for the Blue Norther was 1:36.01, compared to the race-3 Eddie Logan Stakes open to colts and geldings in 1:34.38.
The speed-friendly race flow of the Blue Norther benefited forwardly placed runners. The runner-up Manhattan Jungle raced third throughout, Ami Please raced second as the three front-runners did not come back to the field.
G Laurie, making her first start since a troubled third in the Grade 1 Natalma in September at Woodbine, fizzled without a visible alibi.
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