Chop Chop flies past Flashy Gem for Wintergreen Stakes triumph
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Chop Chop continued a productive winter at Turfway Park, surging past stablemate Flashy Gem in the stretch for a 2 3/4-length win in the $125,000 Wintergreen Stakes for fillies and mares on Saturday night.
This was the second career stakes win for Chop Chop ($5.56), trained by Brad Cox for Selective, LLC. Her first came more than 17 months ago, when she took the Juvenile Fillies at Kentucky Downs in September 2022. Since then, she has placed in three stakes on dirt and turf, including a second-place effort, beaten a nose, in the Grade 1 Alcibiades.
This meeting on Turfway Park’s Tapeta, Chop Chop has won an allowance-optional claiming race by 9 1/2 lengths in December, and finished second to the Cox-trained stablemate Botanical, who is an unbeaten multiple stakes winner at Turfway, by 1 3/4 lengths under similar conditions last month. Both races were at the one-mile distance of the Wintergreen.
In Saturday’s outing, Chop Chop was unhurried early by Luan Machado as Icicles, front-running winner of the Likely Exchange at a mile on Jan. 13 at Turfway, was well rationed through moderate splits of 24.81 seconds for the quarter, 48.87 for the half, and 1:12.84 for six furlongs. As the field came to the quarter pole, Chop Chop was still in fifth. Flashy Gem, who showed her own affinity for Turfway by finishing second to Botanical in the Bourbonette Oaks last year, had dead aim in second as Icicles worked to extend her advantage. But that fight was quickly moot, as Chop Chop, confidently handled by Machado while kept in the clear, turned on her best run and came swooping by to clear off to the wire.
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The final time for the mile was 1:37.90.
Flashy Gem, who was sent away favored for Cox and Spendthrift Farm, was second by two lengths over Icicles, who weakened very late.
The next two-turn stakes for fillies and mares at Turfway is the $250,000 Latonia Stakes on the track’s marquee March 23 program. Cox, who appears to be loaded with candidates, won last year’s edition with Idiomatic – the first of six stakes wins in a championship campaign.
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