Joevia notches first stakes win in Long Branch

Joevia notched his first stakes win Sunday at Monmouth Park, leading throughout to take the $100,000 Long Branch for 3-year-olds.

The race was marred by an incident on the far turn in which Red Gum, who had pressed the leader through early splits of 23.80 seconds and 47.94 seconds, dropped back sharply after appearing to take a bad step, unseating jockey Jose Ferrer. Ferrer stood under his own power and walked to the chase ambulance, according to track announcer Jason Beem. Red Gum was vanned off, according to the Equibase chart.

Joevia, ridden Sunday by Nik Juarez, went on to cover 1 1/16 miles over a sloppy, sealed track in 1:44.61, winning by 2 3/4 lengths and returning $4.60. He was followed under the wire by The Right Path and Union’s Destiny. Pretty Good Year, Fix Me a Sandwich, and Regally Irish all were scratched.

The winner was exiting the Grade 2 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct Racetrack on April 6. He crossed the wire seventh, but was disqualified and placed 11th and last for an incident at the start of the race when he angled sharply to the inside from his far outside post position, crowding several rivals in the process.

“We know he’s a better horse than he showed in the Wood Memorial,” trainer Gregg Sacco told Monmouth publicity after the Long Branch. “That was a debacle. So we’ve overcome that. He trained really well for this. Now he’s 2 for 2 at Monmouth Park. He was still playing around a little, so we’ll look into putting blinkers on him. But we’re proud of his performance.”

Sacco said he planned to target the June 26 Pegasus Stakes as an intended prep for the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational on July 20.

Joevia, a son of Shanghai Bobby, is now 2-2-0 from five starts and has earned $110,000 for owners Michael and Jeff Fazio.