McPeek primed to win another Grade 1 at Keeneland with Simply Ravishing in Ashland

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Keeneland is where Ken McPeek has racked up most of his greatest training accomplishments. He’d love to add to that legacy Saturday when saddling Simply Ravishing for her first start at 3.

“We’ve sat on her a long time now, so ought to be really sharp,” McPeek said.

Simply Ravishing, with Luis Saez to ride from post 3, will face five other 3-year-old fillies in the Grade 1, $400,000 Ashland Stakes, a 100-40-20-10 points qualifier toward the April 30 Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs. Not only is the 1 1/16-mile Ashland the first start of 2021 for Simply Ravishing, but also for the other favorite, Malathaat, whose seasonal debut was delayed by one week by somber circumstances.

Simply Ravishing won the Grade 1 Alcibiades here last fall in one of the most dazzling performances by any 2-year-old all year, taking control at once and earning an 89 Beyer Speed Figure in a 6 1/4-length romp. It gave McPeek his 10th career Grade 1 win at Keeneland, by far the most he’s collected at any single track in his 36-year training career.

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“I grew up in Lexington, so it’s home,” McPeek said earlier this week before leaving Florida. “Maybe it’s a coincidence I’ve won all those Grade 1s there, but the thing is I’ve always loved winning at Keeneland, whether it was a maiden-claimer or a Grade 1.”

McPeek’s main counterpart in the Ashland is Todd Pletcher, whose top career feats have been spread among a remarkably wide variety of tracks – including Keeneland, where he began the spring meet with 57 stakes wins, the most in track history. Pletcher, an absolute certainty to be a first-ballot Racing Hall of Fame selection later this year, had intended to run Malathaat last Saturday in the Gulfstream Park Oaks, but the March 24 death of the filly’s owner, Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum of Shadwell Stable, led to a 10-day moratorium on racing activity for all Shadwell runners.

Malathaat will break from post 5 under Joel Rosario, making her first start since completing a 3-for-3 juvenile season with an off-the-pace score in the Grade 2 Demoiselle at Aqueduct in early December in a gritty effort that earned an 86 Beyer. Pletcher said before the Gulfstream Oaks that he was very happy with the way the Curlin filly had progressed in her training at the Palm Beach Downs training center as winter turned to spring.

“She came along the way we’d hoped,” he said.

Simply Ravishing, who has regrouped since back-to-back fourth-place finishes in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies and Golden Rod, also has been on a steady work pattern at Gulfstream Park, from where the New York-bred daughter of Laoban was flown Tuesday.

With both Simply Ravishing and Malathaat fresh from lengthy layoffs, it will be interesting to see who makes the early lead in a lineup that also includes Will’s Secret (post 6, Jon Court), a Dallas Stewart trainee who possesses the same kind of speed and versatility as the two favorites. Will’s Secret is 2 for 2 this year, having won the Martha Washington and Grade 3 Honeybee at Oaklawn Park with 81 and 82 Beyers, respectively.

“My filly’s really good right now, so hopefully she’ll bring her A game again,” Court said.

McPeek noted that Simply Ravishing “is tough when she makes an easy lead, but I guess we’ll all have to see how they leave out of there and how it unfolds. I’ll leave all that up to Luis.”

The rest of the Ashland lineup is Curlin’s Catch, Pass the Champagne, and Moon Swag, none of them yet a graded winner.

Pass the Champagne is the only starter who raced on Lasix in her last race; none will be treated with the bleeder medication Saturday. All carry 121 pounds.

Races on the main track going 1 1/16 miles at Keeneland are “short-stretch” races that begin and end at what is otherwise the sixteenth pole.

This is the 84th running of the Ashland, first run in 1936. It goes as race 9, with post time set for 5:30 p.m. Eastern. The 2020 running was won in stakes-record fashion (1:41.26) over a super-quick surface last July by Speech, trained by longtime former Pletcher assistant Michael McCarthy.