Chandelier kicks off key preps for Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies

Over the space of nine days, beginning Friday, three Grade 1 stakes, all offering fees-paid berths via the Win and You’re In program, will help define the field for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, whose pro-tem divisional leader bats leadoff in the Chandelier on Friday at Santa Anita.

Bast proved much the best Aug. 31 in the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante, romping to an 8 3/4-length victory while earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 85 that is the high mark among the current prospective runners for the Juvenile Fillies.

Both her races to date, though, have been around one turn, and the key hurdle for her, and any others with designs on the divisional title, will be aptitude at two turns.

The Chandelier is the ideal prep in that it will be run at the same distance (1 1/16 miles) and track (Santa Anita) as the Juvenile Fillies five weeks later. Champagne Room, upset winner of the Juvenile Fillies in 2016 – the last time the Breeders’ Cup was at Santa Anita – used the Chandelier as her final prep.

Bast is trained by Bob Baffert, who has won the Juvenile Fillies twice, with Indian Blessing in 2007 and Silverbulletday in 1998.

Only six were entered in the Chandelier, including Comical, who won the Schuylerville at Saratoga in July and most recently was a distant third in the Del Mar Debutante. Comical is trained by Doug O’Neill, who won the division’s lone Win and You’re In race to date, the Pocahontas, with Lazy Daisy, who is headed straight to the Juvenile Fillies.

Shug McGaughey, like Baffert a two-time winner of the Juvenile Fillies, will be represented in both the subsequent Win and You’re In races with fillies who were maiden winners at Saratoga. He said he will send Alandra to the Alcibiades on Oct. 4 at Keeneland, with Mrs. Danvers ticketed to the Frizette on Oct. 6 at Belmont Park.

The Alcibiades, like the Chandelier, is a 1 1/16-mile race around two turns. The Frizette is a one-turn mile.

Alandra is stretching out off just one race.

“I thought her race was really good,” McGaughey said. “The last sixteenth of a mile, she pulled away convincingly. I’ve always liked her, going back to when I saw her as a yearling in Ocala. She trained very well at Saratoga before her race.”

Alandra’s rivals at Keeneland should include Perfect Alibi, who won the Spinaway for Mark Casse.

Mrs. Danvers has run twice, and her Beyer Speed Figure of 82 for her maiden win is the second best to Bast among prospective Juvenile Fillies candidates.

“I thought she ran great,” McGaughey said of the maiden win, earned over runner-up Finite, who subsequently won a maiden race on the grass at Kentucky Downs. “She’s done really well all summer and fall.”

Mrs. Danvers’s Frizette rivals should include Daphne’s Moon, a Saratoga maiden winner for Jeremiah Englehart, and Wicked Whisper, a Saratoga maiden winner for Steve Asmussen.