Fair Grounds: Joyful Victory has bullet workout for Santa Margarita

With Believe You Can’s race this past weekend comfortably out of the way, trainer Larry Jones on Monday turned his attention to Joyful Victory’s scheduled start Saturday in the Grade 1 Santa Margarita at Santa Anita. With Rosie Napravnik in the irons, Joyful Victory worked five furlongs in a bullet 59.80 seconds over a sloppy main track, the mare’s last serious exercise before she attempts to win her first Grade 1 race.

“She went really well,” Jones said. “I don’t normally work on this kind of track, but we had to do it today because she starts toward the airplane tomorrow night. She does get over this kind of track very nice, though.”

Joyful Victory, a very sharp winner of the $400,000 Houston Ladies Classic on Jan. 26, leaves Fair Grounds for Oaklawn Park by van about midnight Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, she will be flown to California. Jones said Napravnik has the call on Joyful Victory in the Santa Margarita.

Believe You Can, meanwhile, came out of her 5 3/4-length victory in Saturday’s New Orleans Ladies in good shape, Jones said. Saturday’s win came after Believe You Can captured the Feb. 2 Tiffany Lass Stakes by more than 10 lengths in her 4-year-old debut. Jones said the two comfortable wins against overmatched competition were a perfect way to start Believe You Can’s season.

“Those two races put a great bottom under her now,” Jones said. “We couldn’t be happier with the way we got her year started off.”

Jones, keeping in mind Believe You Can’s abbreviated 2012 campaign, said he was more inclined to point Believe You Can to the La Troienne Stakes on May 3 at Churchill Downs than the Apple Blossom Invitational on April 12 at Oaklawn Park.

“With the Apple Blossom, I don’t know that we want to get that aggressive with her that soon,” Jones said. “We don’t want to wring her out early in the year again. I really don’t think we’ll try to do anything with her before the La Troienne. We’ll talk, but that’s the race on our radar.”