Her Smile wins stretch battle of Maryland-based fillies with Table Talking

In a battle between two Maryland-based fillies, Her Smile made a four-wide move under Luis Garcia to wrest the lead from Table Talking and gradually edged clear to win the second of two stakes Sunday at Parx Racing restricted to 2-year-olds who spent at least 90 days prior to June 30 in South Carolina..

Her Smile ($4.40), the slight favorite in a field of six fillies for the $75,000 Donna Freyer Stakes, has now won three in a row for trainer Leigh Delacourt. Her lone defeat came when she came up a neck shy in her career debut at Penn National. She completed 6 ½ furlongs in 1:16.83.

Table Talking, bidding to win her second stakes in a row after taking the Small Wonder for Delaware-certified horses last month, took a brief lead a half-mile into Sunday’s race, but was outkicked in the stretch. She easily held second as the 9-5 second choice, 10 ¾ lengths in front of Golden Dina, a Delaware-based filly trained by Bret Calhoun.

In the $72,750 Christopher Elser Memorial for colts and geldings, locally based Ucan’tcme ($2.20) cruised to a wire-to-wire 5 ¾ length win for jockey Hiram Rivera and trainer Ramon Preciado. Ucan’tcme, coming off a maiden win a month ago, ran 6 ½ furlongs in 1:16.11.

Rampaige, a recent maiden winner at Keeneland, finished second, 5 ½ lengths in front of Miscoe Gray in a field reduced to four runners by three scratches.