Perfect for You connects at 25-1 in Holiday Inaugural

Set up by hotly contested pace established by favored Waccamaw, late-running Perfect for You flew down the outside of the track to catch the front-running favorite and win Saturday’s $50,000 Holiday Inaugural at Turfway Park.

Dismissed at 25-1 odds – the co-highest price among the 11 fillies and mares entered in the Holiday Inaugural – Perfect for You hardly looked the part of an overmatched longshot when the race mattered most in the lane. Blowing past fillies over the snow-covered Polytrack surface, she got up with about 50 yards remaining under jockey Fabio Arguello Jr. and pulled clear to a 1 1/2-length victory.

It was her first victory in 10 starts this year, and the first stakes victory of her 22-race career. Previously, her career highlight had been a third in the Grade 3 Dogwood Stakes at Churchill Downs in the spring of 2009, during her 3-year-old year.

Perfect for You, a 4-year-old Giant’s Causeway filly owned by her breeder, G. Watts Humphrey Jr., and trained by Rusty Arnold, raced six furlongs in 1:10.52. She paid $53.20.

Waccamaw, hustled to make the front after briefly trailing a few rivals in the opening furlong, held second despite drifting wide into the stretch, lasting by a half-length over the rail-rallying Minewander, the eventual third-place finisher.

Waccamaw’s failure to keep a straight course could have been partially the result of fatigue. She set a quick opening quarter mile in 21.69 seconds, followed by a half-mile in 45.06.

Perfect for You’s victory improved her synthetic record to 3 for 8, far superior to her record on dirt (1 for 12) and turf (0 for 2).