Include Betty starts season in Heavenly Prize

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Include Betty, a Grade 1-winning 3-year-old filly of 2015, will make her seasonal debut in Saturday’s $150,000 Heavenly Prize Invitational at Aqueduct.

Formerly known as the Cat Cay, the Heavenly Prize, run at 1 1/16 miles over the inner track, drew a field of seven older fillies and mares.

Include Betty, trained by Tom Proctor, went 5 for 11 in 2015. She won four stakes, including the Grade 1 Mother Goose at Belmont in June. She has not raced since finishing second in the off-the-turf Valley View Stakes at Keeneland last Oct. 24.

Tim Thornton, who owns Include Betty with former Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones, said the plan was always to bring Include Betty back as a 4-year-old.

“We think she’ll be as good or better than she was last year,” Thornton said.

Thornton said the hope was to run Include Betty in an allowance race at Tampa Bay Downs, where she is based, or at Oaklawn Park. But Thornton said races at those tracks failed to fill.

“I hate to run in a stakes first start back, but we got to get started,” Thornton said.

Include Betty will be ridden by Aaron Gryder from post 4 in a seven-horse field that includes Cali Star, the winner of the Grade 3 Rampart at Gulfstream, and House Rules, the winner of last year’s Grade 3 Top Flight here. Completing the field are New York-bred stakes winners Saythreehailmary’s and Storied Lady as well as Pangburn and Mei Ling, first and third in the Maryland Racing Media Stakes at Laurel.