Get Ready Bertie tries to one-up mom

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Multiple stakes winner Change Up may be the top juvenile filly in trainer Steve Flint's barn, but his second-stringer, Get Ready Bertie, doesn't look too shabby either. Flint will find out a little bit more about Get Ready Bertie when she faces eight rivals in Saturday's Grade 2, $200,000 Demoiselle Stakes at Aqueduct.

Get Ready Bertie is a daughter of More Than Ready and is the first foal out of De Bertie, a multiple graded stakes winner trained by both Steve and his father, Bernie, and campaigned by Bertram, Elaine, and Richard Klein. De Bertie won the Sabin and Rampart handicaps as a 4-year-old and earned more than $485,000 in a 24-race career.

Get Ready Bertie has proven to be a little more precocious than her mother, winning two of her first six starts, including a four-length score in a two-turn allowance last out at Churchill.

"Her mother didn't get good till the middle of her 3-year-old year," Steve Flint said. "She was a big, gawky, leggy kind of thing. [Get Ready Bertie] is a little more athletic than her mother and she puts herself into the race a little better. I think with added distance she should improve."

The Demoiselle is run at 1 1/8 miles. Get Ready Bertie will break from post 3 under Fernando Jara.

Shippers from Delaware and Canada, as well as locally based stakes winners Successful Outlook and Grand Merger, make the Demoiselle a wide-open affair.

Miss Goodnight, a daughter of Johannesburg trained by Tim Ritchey, has won her last two, including the Blue Hen Stakes at Delaware in her first start around two turns. Super Natascha, second in the Blue Hen, ships in for trainer Michael Matz.

Rivanna River has won two of her three starts, all at Woodbine, and has been turned over to trainer Niall O'Callaghan after handicapping sheets guru Len Friedman bought an interest in her. She breaks from the rail in her first try around two turns.

Successful Outlook, a daughter of Orientate, has looked good winning her first two starts, including the Grade 3 Tempted here on Nov. 3.

"She's about 17 hands [tall], but she has good natural speed and a nice stride," said Toby Sheets, assistant to trainer Scott Blasi. "In the Tempted, she was the only one going on at the end of the race. She's a special filly."

Grand Merger, who won the Maid of the Mist for New York-breds, is a full sister to Grade 1 winner Stephen Got Even.