Letruska never asked for best in Royal Delta romp

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Letruska showed that age hasn’t slowed her a bit when galloping to the easiest kind of victory in her 6-year-old debut Saturday at Gulfstream Park.

Honored earlier this month with an Eclipse Award as the top female dirt runner of 2021, Letruska made short work of five other fillies and mares in a three-length jaunt as the 1-10 favorite in the Grade 3, $150,000 Royal Delta.

Letruska paid $2.20 after finishing the 1 1/16-mile distance in 1:43.43 over a fast track. It was her first start since she completed an otherwise brilliant 5-year-old campaign with a 10th-place finish in the Nov. 6 Breeders’ Cup Distaff.

"This is the kind of horse we work for, the kind we want to find,” said her jockey, Jose Ortiz. “Amazing.”

After breaking from post 5, Letruska quickly opened up into the first turn and led by about four or five lengths all the way around, through fractions of 24.39, 48.63, and 1:12.58, as Into Vanishing, a 31-1 shot, gave her closest chase from start to finish. Ortiz never asked Letruska for her best, and in fact, she was being eased up the last 100 yards or so with her ears straight up.

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At the five-sixteenths pole, “I just kind of smooched to her, and I knew the race was over,” said Ortiz. “She did it really easy.”

"She is 6 years old, and she made it look easy,” said Fausto Gutierrez, the Mexico native who trains Letruska for the St. George Stable of his fellow countryman, German Larrea.

"It’s not easy. It’s a Grade 3. To win, you have to make this kind of effort. She looks in very good form and ready for the next race.”

Gutierrez is using the Royal Delta as a bridge for Letruska to the Grade 1 Apple Blossom on April 23 at Oaklawn Park, and after that, he intends to keep the mare stabled for much of the rest of the year at Keeneland, where another run in the BC Distaff in November is the year-end goal.

Letruska, a bay Kentucky-bred by Super Saver, now has won 18 of 24 career starts and $2,348,529. Four of her 2021 wins came in Grade 1 events.

The only surprise to the Royal Delta was the performance of Crazy Beautiful, a multiple graded winner who had every chance to be second but failed to show her usual late run. Instead, it was Into Vanishing fending off 26-1 Il Malocchio by three-quarters of a length for second, with Crazy Beautiful, the 9-2 second choice, another 1 1/2 lengths back in fourth. Key Biscayne and Helping Lisa D filled out the order.

The $2 exacta (6-2) paid $24, the $1 trifecta (6-2-1) returned $62.20, and the 10-cent superfecta (6-2-1-3) was worth $13.34.

With such a huge favorite, the Royal Delta was carded earlier in the day than it might have been otherwise, as the sixth of 12 races, and therefore was not part of the Rainbow 6, which was subject to a mandatory disbursement. New bets into the Rainbow 6 (races 7-12) totaled a whopping $7,404,674 in pursuit of a carryover of nearly $1.1 million.