Hovdey: The turf mares of Gamely command attention

There is a tendency to think that there are only 3-year-old colts running around American racetracks right now and only one of them matters.

Fascinating as his training moves might be, however, American Pharoah has not raced since winning the Preakness on May 16 and will not run again until he goes for the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes on June 6. That has left a lot of time on idle hands, but there is at least one group of top-class Thoroughbreds willing and able to fill the competitive void whenever the need arises.

Fillies and mares on the grass are the gift that keeps on giving. Since the early 1980s, when international stables noticed that the U.S. was offering plenty of good money and black type for females on the turf, the division has rarely disappointed. This year is no different.

It must be conceded that at times, it looks like Chad Brown’s personal playground. Since April, the stable has sent out Ball Dancing to win the Jenny Wiley at Keeneland, Rosalind to take the Sheepshead Bay at Belmont, and Watsdachances to score in the Gallorette at Pimlico. Somehow, Mark Casse was able to break the Brown hold by winning the Churchill Downs Distaff Mile with Tepin on Derby Day.

In the meantime, the West Coast has enjoyed a steady beat of good, close races for the division, virtually uninterrupted by the nuisance of rain. Since the start of the Santa Anita meet, there have been six graded events at eight, nine, or 10 furlongs and six different winners, beginning with Lady Pimpernel’s score in the Robert J. Frankel Stakes and most recently on Memorial Day, when Hard Not to Like took the $300,000 Gamely in a thriller over Fanticola.

In between, Diversy Harbor won the Buena Vista, Hoop of Colour took the Santa Ana, Queen of The Sand edged Fanticola in the Santa Barbara, and Blingismything beat Smoove It in the Wilshire. With the exception of Diversy Harbor, who suffered a fatal injury in the Santa Barbara, they are all still going strong and heading into what should be an entertaining summer season.

Last Monday’s Gamely, at 1 1/8 miles, came down to the switch of a stick inside the final sixteenth of a mile. To that point, Joe Talamo and Fanticola had led nearly every step of the way, but now Blingismything was alongside under Tyler Baze and driving hard, while Flavien Prat, on Elektrum, and Victor Espinoza, aboard Hard Not to Like, were maneuvering to find any kind of daylight.

“My mare doesn’t have that quick burst, but she’s got a great cruising speed, and she can fight off those others when they come to her,” Talamo said. “I wanted to make sure she stayed engaged with Tyler’s mare because I knew how tough mine could be in a fight like that.”

Hard Not to Like was coming off a third-place finish to Ball Dancing in the Jenny Wiley for Christophe Clement, and Espinoza, otherwise occupied this spring with American Pharoah, was riding her for the first time.

“When you jump out of the gate and get position, you don’t really know yet what you’ve got,” said Espinoza. “But by the time we got to the half-mile, I was getting excited. I thought this could turn out good. I decided to stay inside and take a chance. If I get through, I get through.”

He got through, but it wasn’t as simple as that. With barely a sixteenth of a mile to run, Prat decided he’d try to split Fanticola and Blingismything. Just as he did, Talamo switch the stick to his left hand.

“When I saw that, I thought, ‘Uh-oh, that’s it,’ ” Espinoza said. “I got really excited because I knew I had a lot of horse. By the time he saw me, I was already up in there.”

A more polite jockey would have hollered, “Oh, Joe, I’ll be moving inside you now.” But Mrs. Espinoza did not raise any dummies.

“I wish he would have,” Talamo said. “It seemed like only those last four or five jumps he was able to get up in there. If I could have seen him sooner, I would have made it a lot tighter. I won’t cherry-coat it – that really hurt. That wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. But my mare ran too good to lose.”

The final margin was a neck, with Blingismything another half-length back in third and Elektrum a close fourth.

Hard Not to Like, by Hard Spun, joins a list of Gamely winners dating back to 1973, the first of 43 consecutive runnings at nine furlongs on the grass. The fact that the last two have been run at Santa Anita instead of Hollywood Park takes nothing away of a history that includes such names as Susan’s Girl, Kilijaro, Sabin, Estrapade, Fiji, Tuscan Evening, and Marketing Mix.

If nothing else, the Gamely has given the sport more than its share of remarkable broodmares, which, after all, is the point of quality racing over a distance of ground. Katonka, who beat Tizna in the 1976 Gamely, produced the major turf stakes winner Talakeno. Hollywood Wildcat, a champion and winner of the 1994 Gamely, gave us Breeders’ Cup Mile winner War Chant, while Tranquility Lake, the 1999 winner, produced After Market and Courageous Cat.

Then there was Toussaud, the winner of the Gamely in 1993, when she set a stakes record of 1:45. As a broodmare, she produced Belmont Stakes winner Empire Maker, the sire of Pioneerof the Nile, who in turn sired American Pharoah.

There, we’re back to him.