Daisycutter matches Twilight Gleaming against older Leggs Galore
DEL MAR, Calif. – Twilight Gleaming on Friday returns to the site of her greatest victory and figures to be favored in the $100,000 Daisycutter Handicap for female turf sprinters, but standing in her way is the fast, locally based Leggs Galore, their expected battle making for a highly anticipated highlight to another meaty Del Mar card.
Twilight Gleaming won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint here last November. She’s 1 for 2 since and wasn’t even expected to be here for the five-furlong Daisycutter. But, according to trainer Wesley Ward, after she experienced discomfort from being cinched too tight during a workout, she was withdrawn from a 5 1/2-furlong turf spirnt at Saratoga and sent west.
“We erred on the side of caution,” Ward said. “She worked phenomenal after that happened, and she showed an affinity for that course last fall. Plus I think the distance is better for her. She’s a solid five-eighths filly. At 5 1/2, she’s just a hair vulnerable.”
Twilight Gleaming, 3, will be making her first start against elders in the five-furlong Daisycutter. She carries actual weight of 121 pounds, but as a 3-year-old facing older she is allowed four pounds on the scale of weights at this time of year, meaning she was assigned top weight of 125 pounds.
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Twilight Gleaming is fast. She rocketed from the gate in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, completing an ambitious juvenile campaign that saw her race in Great Britain and France, too. She has raced twice this year, and most recently won the five-furlong Mamzelle at Churchill Downs the Saturday following the Kentucky Derby.
To prevail, though, Twilight Gleaming will have to deal with the fleet Leggs Galore, back home after setting wicked fractions against the best female grass runners in the country in the Grade 1 Just a Game on the Belmont Stakes undercard. A winner of 2 of 3 starts here, and 9 of 15 overall, Leggs Galore figures to give Twilight Gleaming all she can handle. She is weighted at 124.
“She broke her maiden here going five-eighths,” her trainer, Phil D’Amato, said Wednesday morning. “She’s proven effective around one turn. She’s fresh and happy.
“Her last breeze,” D’Amato said, referring to a five-furlong move in 1:01.80 on Sunday morning, “was really good.”
D’Amato also sends out She’s So Nice, winner of a second-level allowance going six furlongs on turf May 22 at Santa Anita. This will be her first try against stakes company since being imported at the end of 2020.
“She should get good tactical position,” D’Amato said, conceding Leggs Galore and Twilight Gleaming figure to be most prominent. “This was the next logical step for her after her win last time. We’ll see how she does in a stakes.”
The Daisycutter drew four others, making a field of seven. It’s a rare small field on a card overflowing in most races. Of the seven other races on the eight-race card, six had so many entries also-eligibles were needed, and the other race drew 10.
The Daisycutter is race 6 on a card that begins at 4 p.m. Pacific.