Fair Grounds: Rachel Alexandra starting point for Ria Antonia
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NEW ORLEANS – Ria Antonia was placed first via disqualification in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at odds of 32-1. She was an outsider then, her price appealing to anyone who fancied her, but now Ria Antonia has a reputation, and her backers will be looking at much shorter odds when she makes her 3-year-old debut Saturday in the Grade 3, $200,000 Rachel Alexandra Stakes at Fair Grounds.
What’s more, the Rachel Alexandra appears to have entrants with quality to rival anything Ria Antonia faced in the Breeders’ Cup, even though leading Fair Grounds-based 3-year-old filly Unbridled Forever is awaiting the March 29 Fair Grounds Oaks, and two talented Larry Jones-trained fillies, Divine Beauty and Cassatt, recently dropped out of this race.
The seven-horse Rachel Alexandra field includes two talented shippers, Got Lucky from Todd Pletcher in Florida and Streaming from trainer Bob Baffert in California, as well as an improving local horse, Shanon Nicole. All three have raced more recently than Ria Antonia, who got time off following the Breeders’ Cup but has logged five workouts since shipping to Fair Grounds from New York in early January.[bc_video_id:316890:]
“I think she’s going to need this race,” trainer Jeremiah Englehart said. “In her breezes so far, she doesn’t look like she’s 100 percent tight, ready to fire. She’s been breezing just fine, but I compare it to the week before the Breeders’ Cup, when she was just training sensational.”
The jury still is out on the strength of the BC Juvenile Fillies and, by association, Ria Antonia, who won one of three starts, all sprinting, on Woodbine’s Polytrack before joining Englehart’s barn in New York, where she was fifth in the Frizette before the BC Juvenile Fillies. Englehart, however, thinks Ria Antonia is something special.
“She doesn’t train like average horses,” he said. “When she gallops, you can just tell she’s a nice horse. I’d be shocked if she never won another Grade 1.”
Got Lucky could prove to be a Grade 1 horse. Still a maiden, she was beaten a neck in the Grade 2 Demoiselle last fall in her second start. Got Lucky won for the first time in her 3-year-old debut, cruising to a 5 1/4-length score over a sloppy track in a Gulfstream Park one-turn mile, short of her best distance.
“She always gave me the impression she wants two turns, a mile and an eighth or more,” Pletcher said.
Got Lucky has positional speed, a nice way of going, and a great pedigree, and might be the horse to beat in a race Pletcher won last year with Unlimited Budget.
Streaming won her first two starts, a maiden race and the Grade 1 Hollywood Starlet, but could not run down the pacesetting Fashion Plate and finished second Feb. 1 in the Grade 1 Las Virgenes at Santa Anita, her first start in almost two months.
“She got a little short on me,” Baffert said. “She’ll move way forward, I think.”