Chop Chop, Flashy Gem ready to duke it out in Wintergreen

Chop Chop and Flashy Gem both have followed Turfway-loving stablemate Botanical home in recent outings. The two don’t have to worry about that formidable filly, but must face each other, in the $125,000 Wintergreen Stakes, the Saturday night feature at the Florence, Ky., track.

Chop Chop was a stakes winner on turf at Kentucky Downs as a juvenile and has placed in three other stakes races – including finishing second by a nose in the Grade 1 Alcibiades that season. Trained by Brad Cox for Selective LLC, the filly was a 9 1/4-length winner in an allowance race in December at Turfway, going the same mile distance as the Wintergreen. Under similar conditions Jan. 26, she chased home Botanical, trained by Cox for LNJ Foxwoods and Clearsky Farm, to be second by 1 3/4 lengths. Botanical, who was coming off a layoff of nearly eight months, is unbeaten in five starts at Turfway, including last year’s Cincinnati Trophy and Bourbonette Oaks.

Fellow Cox trainee Flashy Gem, who races for Spendthrift Farm, chased Botanical around the Turfway oval in the Bourbonette Oaks, finishing second by 2 1/2 lengths for one of her three career stakes placings. She owns two allowance wins at a mile on Turfway, including a 7 1/4-length romp in her most recent start Dec. 23.

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Both fillies came out of their most recent outings to work strongly at Turfway, with Chop Chop firing a bullet half-mile Feb. 18, the fastest work of the day at that distance, and Flashy Gem turning in the third-fastest work at the distance the same morning. Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey Axel Concepcion, who rode both fillies last out, stays on Flashy Gem for the Wintergreen, while Luan Machado picks up the mount on Chop Chop.

In terms of race strategy, Flashy Gem prefers to track the pace intently from second or third, but has shown the ability to take the lead and control the tempo if no others take initiative. Chop Chop will come from farther back.

Flashy Gem could find herself tracking Icicles, a front-running winner of the Likely Exchange at a mile at Turfway in her stakes debut in January. She earned an 86 Beyer Speed Figure for that effort – narrowly the best last-out figure in this field to Flashy Gem’s 85. Icicles, who will have Adam Beschizza in the irons for John Ennis, has now won three of her last four starts.

McPeek earns 2,000th victory

Trainer Kenny McPeek earned his 2,000th career win Wednesday night at Turfway Park, when Winnable scored by 3 1/2 lengths in a maiden special weight.

Winnable, a 3-year-old Justify filly, races as a homebred for Joe Murphy’s Stoneleigh Farm.

“Thank you to everyone for the kind messages. To staff, clients, and horses for all they’ve done,” McPeek wrote on social media. “What I’m most proud of was winning for Joe Murphy and at Turfway Park where I began. Joe’s father, J.B. Murphy, gave me a horse as a very young trainer in 1987. Judge C. W. was my first $100,000 earner.”

McPeek, 61, has trained runners who have earned more than $117.2 million. His 19 individual Grade 1 winners are led by Eclipse Award champion Swiss Skydiver, winner of the 2020 Preakness Stakes; 2002 Belmont Stakes winner Sarava; Take Charge Lady, a multiple Grade 1 winner who has gone on to be an influential broodmare; and multiple Grade 1 winner Harlan’s Holiday, the sire of record-setting leading sire Into Mischief.

McPeek, who finished second in the 1995 Kentucky Derby with Tejano Run, and has three times finished second in the Kentucky Oaks – including with Take Charge Lady and Swiss Skydiver – has horses on the trail to both spring classics this year. While Southwest Stakes winner Mystik Dan awaits the Arkansas Derby, McPeek will saddle Common Defense and Northern Flame in the Rebel Stakes Saturday at Oaklawn Park; the colts are among his 13 Triple Crown nominees. Martha Washington winner Band of Gold, one of his eight Oaks nominees, runs in the Honeybee on the Rebel undercard.

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