Neige Blanche earns start in Grade 1 Rodeo Drive
The turf marathoner Neige Blanche has earned her first Grade 1 start of the year this fall after winning Saturday’s $85,500 CTT & TOC Stakes for fillies and mares at Del Mar.
Trainer Leonard Powell said on Sunday that Neige Blanche is scheduled to have her next start in the $300,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes for fillies and mares at 1 1/4 miles on turf at Santa Anita on Oct. 2. The winner receives a fees-paid berth to the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Del Mar on Nov. 6.
“She’s getting better and better,” Powell said.
Neige Blanche won the Grade 3 Santa Barbara Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on turf at Santa Anita in May, her fifth start in this country. In the second half of 2020, Neige Blanche started in three Grade 1 races for 3-year-old fillies on turf, with her best result a third in the Belmont Oaks last September.
Neige Blanche is a French-bred filly by the Anabaa stallion Anodin who races for the partnership of Madaket Stable, Laura De Seroux, Marsha Naify, and Mathilde Powell. De Seroux is a former trainer best known for her work with 2002 Horse of the Year Azeri.
Neige Blanche has won 5 of 13 starts and earned $237,720. The CTT & TOC Stakes was her third stakes win. She won the Group 3 Prix Cleopatre in France in June 2020 in her final start in that country.
Flashiest, Powell’s leading 3-year-old, is scheduled to start in the Grade 2 Del Mar Derby on Sept. 4 after mixed results in his last two starts. Flashiest won the restricted Oceanside Stakes at a mile on turf at Del Mar on July 16, but was last of 11 at 41-1 in the Grade 1 Saratoga Derby at Saratoga on Aug. 7.
Leonard Powell said Flashiest was uncomfortable in the minutes before the Saratoga Derby.
“The pre-race, the crowd, and the heat and the humidity got to him,” Powell said “He was a bit wound up in the paddock. He was too immature for it.”
The $300,000 Del Mar Derby is run at 1 1/8 miles on turf.