Immersive back to graded stakes glory with Fleur de Lis win
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – For the first time since the 2024 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, Immersive won a graded stakes race, and she did so in dramatic fashion capturing the Fleur de Lis on Saturday at Churchill Downs.
Sent to the lead in a field reduced to four by the scratch of morning-line favorite Splendora, Immersive dueled inside 3-5 favorite Shred the Gnar around the first turn, down the backstretch, and into the far turn. At the three-eighths pole, Shred the Gnar on the outside came directly abreast Immersive, and by the quarter-pole, as she’d opened nearly a length on Immersive, you’d have made Shred the Gnar a 1-9 favorite to get home.
Immersive basically had a lost 3-year-old season during 2025, and finally, this spring, got into a rhythmic racing pattern, the Fleur de Lis her third start back from a half-year break. Immersive went 4 for 4 as a 2-year-old, winning three Grade 1s, and earning an Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old filly.
Saying Immersive showed the heart of a champion in the Grade 2, $483,000 Fleur de Lis was more than empty verbiage – the filly was a champion, and she absolutely showed heart Saturday.
If you’d carefully watched Immersive’s first two races this year, you might not have thought she was done at the top of the stretch.
In both starts, Immersive came off the bridle around the far turn and spun her wheels into the homestretch, like a horse on the verge of throwing in the towel. And in both races, Immersive suddenly engaged again at the eighth pole and finished with good energy.
Irad Ortiz Jr., aboard Saturday, had ridden Immersive for the first time in the Shawnee here last month, and described feeling aboard Immersive the same thing one could observe watching from afar.
Ortiz, looking at Luis Saez and Shred the Gnar ahead of him turning for home vigorously encouraged his mount, and as Immersive stoked back up, Shred the Gnar began faltering. Had the tempo been fast? The first quarter mile went in 23.38, the half in 47.08, but who knows what that meant. The Churchill track started the day sloppy and sealed; drying out, it was upgraded to muddy one race before the Fleur de Lis.
Whatever the pace dynamics, they took their toll on Shred the Gnar, winner here last out of the Grade 1 La Troienne over 1 1/16 miles, though even had the Fleur de Lis been run at that distance rather than 1 1/8 miles, Immersive still would have won.
Past the eighth pole, Immersive pushed her way back to the lead, but even as Shred the Gnar fell away, Regaled loomed on the outside. Regaled has no speed and jockey Tyler Gaffalione really had to ride the mare just keeping her in the game, a distant third at the half-mile pole, but Regaled loves a wet track and stays 1 1/8 miles. Truth be told, she was not gaining fast on Immersive at the wire, falling three-quarters of a length short as Immersive pulled clear again on the gallop-out.
Regaled finished 2 1/4 lengths clear of Shred the Gnar, who beat the only other start, In Just My Heels, by four lengths.
“She tried as hard as she could; she just got beat,” said Shred the Gnar’s trainer, Brian Lynch, who expected Immersive to come out the gate running, a tactical shift. “It didn’t surprise me at all. I figured that would be the tactics. We made the move on her when I think we needed to - we just come up short.”
Immersive paid $5.34 as the solid second choice and clocked 1:50.51 for her first win over 1 1/8 miles. Godolphin bred and owns Immersive, a daughter of Nyquist and the Bernardini mare Gap Year who raced only three times as a 3-year-old, her lone win in an overnight stakes. It’s rare for a precocious champion to rebound from a disappointing sophomore campaign to run well at age 4 – but it’s rare for a filly as accomplished as Immersive to get the chance, trainer Brad Cox pointed out.
The Fluer de Lis is a Win and You're In race for the Breeders' Cup, and with Saturday's victory, Immersive earned a fees-paid berth into the BC Distaff at Keeneland.
Immersive has taken some work. Last year she developed pre-race quirks, and she comes to the track with a pony, who stays by her side during much of the paddock preliminaries.
“She’s really been training good this year,” Cox said. “I think this will set her up for Saratoga.”
That sounds like a return to Grade 1 competition for Immersive. The champ has the heart for it.
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