Lovable Lyss sharp but on short rest for Goldfinch
For a few weeks this winter, it looked like Lovable Lyss might be a player in races as prominent as the Fair Grounds Oaks, and while that didn’t work out, Lovable Lyss is absolutely the horse to beat in the $65,000 Goldfinch Stakes on Saturday night at Prairie Meadows.
Lovable Lyss looks well drawn outside six rivals in the six-furlong Goldfinch for 3-year-old fillies, and while she offered great value when paying $10 to win a $75,000 stakes on April 16 at Mahoning Valley, her 5-2 morning line Saturday feels high, with Lovable Lyss likely to go postward as a defined favorite for owner-trainer Hugh Robertson and jockey Alex Canchari.
Lovable Lyss surpassed the $100,000 mark in earnings with her recent stakes win, which already qualifies her as a strongly successful $7,000 auction purchase, hardly the first bargain-bin find for Robertson, who has made a great living buying overlooked horses light on pedigree at yearling auctions and developing them into six-figure earners on the track.
Lovable Lyss looked like she might turn into any kind of horse when she won a sprint maiden race by almost four lengths in November at Fair Grounds and a route allowance race by five while under wraps there in December, but things went wrong for her in the Silverbulletday Stakes and the Rachel Alexandra Stakes early this year, after which Robertson regrouped.
He turned Lovable Lyss back to a sprint at Mahoning Valley, and Lovable Lyss, who had won on talent alone at Fair Grounds, turned in the most professional start of her career, rating kindly in traffic and drawing clear late to win going away.
“She seems to be maturing a little bit,” Robertson said. “One reason I sprinted her, I figured they’d outrun her a little bit for the lead and she’d relax more, which she did.”
Lovable Lyss is in line for a favorable journey Saturday, the lone question being her ability to wheel back on relatively short rest. With no other spot in which to run, and sitting on a sharp filly, Robertson is willing to take his chance.
My Master Plan, a Texas-bred stakes winner last out and a narrow winner of the one-mile Trapeze at Remington last year, looks like the main competition, though she will need to work out a trip as a stalking type drawn in post 2. Cosmic Evolution turns back from routes, drops from a pair of Grade 3 races, and looks likely to supply the early pace along with Dundalk Bay and D R C’s Pretty Skies.