Champions Letruska, Ce Ce square off in Apple Blossom Handicap
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The champions Letruska and Ce Ce will meet for the first time Saturday in the Grade 1, $1 million Apple Blossom Handicap, and the clash comes on an Oaklawn track both first raced over in 2020.
It was during the early stages of the pandemic, and the Southern California-based Ce Ce swept into town and won the Apple Blossom. Letruska also competed at Oaklawn that April, winning an allowance after shipping in from South Florida.
Since that time, much has changed.
Ce Ce focused on one-turn races last year and captured both the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint and the Eclipse Award for outstanding female sprinter of 2021.
Letruska won last year’s Apple Blossom over champions Monomoy Girl and Swiss Skydiver, racked up three more Grade 1 wins, and took down the Eclipse for outstanding older dirt female of 2021.
Now, both 6-year-old mares are back in town attempting to join Paseana, Azeri, and Zenyatta as the only multiple winners of the Apple Blossom. The race was first run in 1958.
“The Apple Blossom, I think, is the most prestigious race for fillies and mares,” said Fausto Gutierrez, who trains Letruska for breeder St. George Stables. “The Breeders’ Cup is another situation. But thinking about tradition or history or the mares to win this race, for sure the Apple Blossom is the race for the races. And to think about possibly winning two Apple Blossoms is an honor and a privilege, and more than a dream.”
The Apple Blossom cast of five is completed by Grade 1 winners Clairiere and Maracuja and eight-time stakes winner Miss Imperial. The 1 1/16-mile race goes as the fifth on a 12-race card that includes the Grade 2, $1 million Oaklawn Handicap and $150,000 Oaklawn Stakes.
“It’s a huge race,” said Michael McCarthy, who trains Ce Ce for breeder Bo Hirsch. “It’s a great test. I wouldn’t trade places with anybody and I’m sure nobody else would trade places, either.”
Letruska enters off a three-length win in the Grade 3 Royal Delta on Feb. 26 at Gulfstream. It was her first start of the year, after she was part of a punishing pace in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff in which she finished 10th in November.
“The Breeders’ Cup result is a combination of different factors,” Gutierrez said. “First, she had a very strong campaign. And I think it would be an illusion to think she could just gallop along . . . at the Breeders’ Cup.
“Other favorites didn’t finish in the top three positions.”
Letruska’s return in the Royal Delta yielded a Beyer Speed Figure of 96, the co-highest last-race number in the Apple Blossom.
“It came after a vacation of around six, seven weeks,” Gutierrez said. “She’s come back very good in my opinion, the physical and how she’s trained. Now she’s an older horse and is a little bit more relaxed.”
Letruska is the 124-pound highweight Saturday. Jose Ortiz has the mount from post 2.
“She runs free, normally,” Gutierrez said. “We can’t change anything at this time. She has one style, and I say to Jose Ortiz he’s one of the riders to have the qualities to try to moderate that rhythm of the race. So, we’ll see.”
Ce Ce, at 121 pounds, will break from post 5 under Victor Espinoza.
“Drawing outside, we’ll bounce away from there, get some position, and go from there,” McCarthy said. “It looks like [Miss Imperial] has a touch of speed and obviously Letruska, her best races are when she’s on the lead. Victor knows this mare so well. I’m going to leave it up to him.”
Ce Ce won the Grade 2 Azeri at this distance March 12 at Oaklawn. It marked a return to route racing for the mare.
“More or less it was a spacing type of thing,” McCarthy said. “There wasn’t anything [at home] I was really crazy about. I knew Oaklawn was a surrounding she was familiar with, a surface she seemed to excel over, and the way she ran the other day, it was a no-brainer for $1 million to go back.”
Clairiere was a standout winner in her 4-year-old debut March 16 at Fair Grounds. She won an allowance by more than six lengths, with a 96 Beyer. It came after Clairiere ran fourth in the BC Distaff.
“She is racing royalty, being a Curlin out of Cavorting when she came into the world,” trainer Steve Asmussen said. “And then for her to consistently run at the level she has – winning a Grade 1 in the Cotillion and a very valiant effort in the BC Distaff last year – if anything, she’s who she should be as a 4-year-old, considering her pedigree. She’s bigger, stronger, faster.”
Joel Rosario has the mount on Clairiere, a homebred for Stonestreet Stables weighted at 121.
Maracuja, winner of last year’s Coaching Club American Oaks, launched her 4-year-old season with an allowance win at Oaklawn. Miss Imperial was third in the same race April 1.