Downthedustyroad a good fit for Ms Fifty First St.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Ms Fifty First St. will have a couple of significant variables in her favor Saturday when she seeks to nail down the first stakes win of her career in the $100,000 Downthedustyroad at Oaklawn Park.

The race, which will be run over six furlongs, is for fillies and mares bred in Arkansas.

Ms Fifty First St. has recency on chief rivals Easter Indy, a two-time winner of the Downthedustyroad, and Georgia’s Reward, winner of last year’s Rainbow Miss, as both last raced in October. Ms Fifty First St. also drew well, getting post nine in a field of nine for Saturday.

“We were hoping to get an outside post,” trainer Al Cates said. “It seems like she runs better from out there.”

Ms Fifty First St. has made two stakes starts in her career, running third in the $100,000 Rainbow Miss in 2017 at Oaklawn and third in last year’s Downthedustyroad. The latter effort was sandwiched by a pair of statebred allowance wins in Hot Springs.

Ms Fifty First St. enters this year’s Downthedustyroad off a troubled eighth-place finish in an optional $50,000 claiming sprint for fillies and mares on Jan. 26. Shanghai Tariff won the six-furlong race in a blazing 1:09.80. The start was the first since last April for Ms Fifty First St.

“She’d been off a while and the owners and I, we kind of thought she might need a race,” Cates said. “That was about the only spot we could find and of course, it came up really tough. But, we feel like we got a race out of her, and we hope she’ll move up off of it.

“It definitely perked her up.”

Cates said following the race jockey Richard Eramia told him Ms Fifty First St. got hit from behind on the turn for home and it “kind of threw her off stride and she kind of shut down.”

Ricardo Santana, who regularly rides Ms Fifty First St., will be back aboard Saturday. The jockey won four races on the holiday Monday program at Oaklawn, including the Grade 3, $200,000 Bayakoa.

Ms Fifty First St. races for the J & J Thoroughbreds operation of Eugenia Thompson, who named the filly for the street she grew up on in North Little Rock, Cates said.

“I think we’ll have a cheering section from 51st Street, I hope,” Cates said.

Others making up the field include Superstar Bea, a winner of her last two starts who is making her first out since July, and Usual Suspect, a half-sister to multiple stakes winner Weast Hill.