Hillerito holds on for Dream Supreme Stakes triumph

Hillerito stalked the pace, pounced on the leaders at the quarter pole, opened a clear lead and won the $300,000 Dream Supreme Stakes on Saturday at Churchill Downs … by a head.

Home free at the furlong grounds, having surged 2 1/2 lengths clear of 1-2 favorite R Disaster, Hillerito promptly planted her toes in the ground. R Disaster narrowed the gap, drawing closer, closer, but the wire came before she could reel in Hillerito, who was fortunate to hold on.

The top two proved much the best, third-place Jersey Pearl checking in 4 1/2 lengths behind R Disaster, who narrowly failed to provide trainer Saffie Joseph with an overdue first stakes victory at Churchill. Joseph now is winless with 36 such starters.

Winning owner and trainer David Jacobson was not only winless from 2019 through 2022, he also was start-less, having “retired” from training because of poor health, Jacobson said at the time. That absence was nothing compared to the 25-year ban from the sport handed down to Jacobson in 1982 after he was found to have neglected the care of a horse in his barn.

Hillerito, presumably, knew none of that history when, under Tyler Gaffalione on Saturday, she moved sharply to the lead with a three-wide run approaching the quarter pole. This marked a stark tactical shift. Hillerito was making her eighth start, her fourth for Jacobson after beginning her career with Kentucky Derby-winning trainer Eric Reed, and in every one of her previous outings she led at the first point of call. Gaffalione had no trouble easing his mount back off an opening quarter-mile 22.29, R Disaster narrowly leading while placed outside pace rival Jersey Pearl. Hillerito swept to the lead with the sort of move typically associated with a runaway winner, and R Disaster in her dozen starts had never passed a rival between the stretch call and the finish, but this one ended up very close, indeed.

Hillerito, who paid $11.98 to win, clocked 1:09.56 for six furlongs over a fast track in a race that drew 10 entrants but went with six starters after scratches. The 5-year-old mare now has won six of eight outings and never has finished worse than second. Bred in Kentucky by Theta Holding 1, Hillerito is by Army Mule out of Reveille’s Echo, by War Front.

At Keeneland last month, Hillerito led for most of a 6 1/2-furlong allowance race but got tagged on the wire. Saturday at Churchill, six furlongs worked for her – just barely.

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