Love You Anyway gets first stakes win with Sunkissed Stakes upset
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Love You Anyway notched her first stakes win and just her third win of any sort when she upset the $250,000 Sunkissed Stakes at 16-1 on Sunday at Ellis Park.
Love You Anyway and Axel Concepcion stalked a moderate pace in the Sunkissed, for older fillies and mares at one mile on turf, before sailing clear in midstretch. A 1 3/4-length lead at the stretch call was evaporating in the final half-furlong, but Love You Anyway held clear Vive Veuve to win by three-quarters of a length. Medoro, the even-money favorite, could not match stride with the top two and checked in third, a half-length behind Vive Veuve.
Rusty Arnold trains Love You Anyway, who ran far better than the Arnold-trained 4-1 shot In the Stars, who got stuck very wide and finished a non-contending seventh. Love You Anyway’s 4-year-old campaign began in April with a first-level Keeneland turf allowance win but went off course when a Lone Star Park turf stakes rained off the grass. Love You Anyway stayed in the race and ran dismally but clearly was no worse for the experience.
The winner clocked 1:35.41 and paid $35.14. Love You Anyway is a daughter of Tapit and Princess La Quinta, by Quality Road, and campaigns for Bregman Family Racing.
Favorites fall in Pucker Up, Water Tower
Heavy favorites floundered in a pair of stakes for 3-year-olds over 1 1/8 miles on grass, Bohemian up by a head in the $243,750 Pucker Up for fillies, Fancy Sailor a one-length winner in the $250,000 Water Tower.
Fancy Sailor, who paid $7.68 as the close third choice, got an ideal stalking trip under Brian Hernandez Jr. while making his stakes debut in his fifth start. Hernandez waited patiently behind a moderate tempo before playing his hand in midstretch, overtaking even-money pacesetting favorite Blackmail in the final furlong and holding off Royal Causeway to win by one length. Blackmail, who got an easy trip on the lead, had no late punch and was third, 1 3/4 lengths out of second.
Brian Lynch trains Fancy Sailor for his breeder, the Raroma Stable, who came up with Fancy Sailor by mating Justify with their Hard Spun mare Tiz Ro, also trained by Lynch. Fancy Sailor, stretching out as far as 1 1/8 miles for the first time, clocked 1:48.86, and Lynch has designs on the rich Nashville Derby at Kentucky Downs.
Bohemian ($15.64) also figures to wind up at Kentucky Downs, where she finished third in a maiden race last season, after breaking a five-race losing streak in the Pucker Up. Last behind a slow half-mile split of 49.03 seconds, Bohemian came with a sustained run under Umberto Rispoli and nipped Turner’s Charm on the wire. Embrace Time finished third after pressing the pace of heavily favored East Jabip, who could do no better than fourth.
Bohemian, trained by Joe Sharp for Carl Moore Management, won back-to-back races last fall at Churchill and Fair Grounds and just missed beating males in the Texas Turf Mile at Lone Star. Her form took a turn for the worse, but she rebounded Sunday over a softer surface that might have played to her strength, Bohemian getting her nine furlongs over good ground in 1:49.04.
Bohemian is by Essential Quality out of Eileen’s Song, by Kitten’s Joy, a pedigree suggesting the filly could be even more effective at distances longer than the Pucker Up.
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