Get Her Number wins American Pharoah in dirt debut, gets BC Juvenile spot

ARCADIA, Calif. – After a pair of starts on turf, Get Her Number moved to the main track for the first time on Saturday at Santa Anita. He’ll be staying there for awhile.

Get Her Number earned a fees-paid berth to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on Nov. 6 at Keeneland and got a highly prized Grade 1 victory by capturing the $301,000 American Pharoah, this track’s major prep for 2-year-old males heading to the Breeders’ Cup.

Get Her Number ($18.20) was right into the race from the start of the 1 1/16-mile race. He sat just off longshot pacesetter Dyn O Mite through a half-mile in 47.07 seconds, wrested command from that rival heading around the far turn, then staved off 11-1 shot Rombauer to win by three-quarters of a length.

The maiden Spielberg, the even-money favorite after finishing second most recently in the Del Mar Futurity, was another 4 3/4 lengths back in third, then came, in order, Waspirant, Dyn O Mite, Touchdown Brown, and Notable Exception. Weston was scratched earlier in the day.

The win was the second stakes of the day for Gary Barber, who owns Get Her Number outright and is a partner on Bulletproof One, who won the Unzip Me to start the day. Both Bulletproof One and Get Her Number are trained by Peter Miller.

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Get Her Number won his debut sprinting on turf at Del Mar on Aug. 14, then was fourth in the Del Mar Juvenile Turf on Sept. 7 on the Del Mar Futurity undercard. Dr. Schivel, the Del Mar Futurity winner, is done for the year, and with this race coming up below-par on paper, the time was right to try dirt.

“I thought it was a great move,” said Flavien Prat, who was aboard Get Her Number in both his previous starts and was up again Saturday.

Prat said Get Her Number “broke well and put me right in the race.”

“He settled nicely on the backstretch and when I asked him he gave me a nice move,” Prat said.

Get Her Number, a colt by Dialed In out of the Bernstein mare Fancier, was purchased for just $45,000 at OBS in April. At the same sale, Princess Noor, the winner of the Chandelier Stakes for fillies earlier on the card, was bought for $1.35 million.

Get Her Number completed 1 1/16 miles on the fast main track in 1:44.92, .67 second faster than Princess Noor’s time nearly three hours earlier.