Ginger Brew back to favorite track
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Ginger Brew should go favored in Saturday's $175,000 Maple Leaf, a 1 1/4-mile stakes that is the feature on Breeders' Cup Day at Woodbine. Post time for the first of 11 live races is 12:35 p.m.
Ginger Brew was voted the Sovereign Award for champion 3-year-old filly last year, when she captured the Woodbine Oaks.
Ginger Brew's lone win in six starts this year came in the Belle Mahone Stakes here in August. She raced prominently before fading to fifth last time out in the Grade 1 Spinster at Keeneland.
Trainer Brian Lynch said things didn't go Ginger Brew's way in the nine-furlong Spinster.
"I think she was a victim of circumstance," said Lynch. "She got an inside and outside press all the way to the quarter pole. She never did get a chance to take a breather. She was entitled to get tired, but I thought she hung on quite well. It set up for closers that day."
Ginger Brew is 4 for 5 over Woodbine's Polytrack. Her only loss over that surface came against males in last year's 1 1/4-mile Queen's Plate, in which she finished a head back in second as the favorite.
"She always runs good on this track," said Lynch. "She's a very honest mare. She tries her hardest every time you lead her over there."
Roses 'n' Wine, trained by David Bell, won her first stakes with authority two starts ago in the 1 1/16-mile Algoma, receiving a 101 Beyer Figure.
Most recently in the 1 1/4-mile E.P. Taylor Stakes on turf, Roses 'n' Wine was pressed on the front end before fading in the stretch to finish eighth.
"Looking at the
But then Treat Gently "ran off with the jock, and went with her," Bell said. "It didn't make her rank, but it cost her some. She was prominent until the eighth pole, and then got swallowed up."
Bell said he believes the Maple Leaf distance is within her range.
"I think she can get the mile and a quarter," Bell said. "She's run well at that distance before. She was second in the [2008] Wonder Where Stakes."
Serenading, seventh in the 2007 Maple Leaf, is stretching out for her second start off a layoff. She comes off a third in the Avowal Stakes.