Rare Cox-trained longshot Turnerloose wins Rachel Alexandra
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLE
NEW ORLEANS – The words “Brad Cox” and “longshot” don’t often find their way into the same sentence these days. Cox, now a two-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer, usually is the hunted, not the hunter in graded-stakes races. But in the Grade 2, $300,000 Rachel Alexandra Stakes on Saturday at Fair Grounds, there was the Cox-trained Turnerloose posting a $37 upset.
Turnerloose, under Florent Geroux, was home by a half-length over Goddess of Fire, a 16-1 shot trained by Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher. Awake At Midnyte, who had an eventful trip, finished third.
La Crete broke to the Rachel Alexandra lead from post 1 and was setting the pace going to the half-mile pole when she sustained an injury. Joel Rosario managed to guide her to the outside as the tracking horses went around La Crete, pulling her up as quickly as possible and dismounting. La Crete walked onto a horse ambulance and was taken to trainer Steve Asmussen’s barn, where X-rays revealed a condylar fracture in her right-front leg. Asmussen said La Crete would undergo surgery to repair the injury.
“It should not be life threatening, but putting a pin in anything does have risk,” he said.
Hidden Connection, who had to be used from post 11 to avoid being caught four paths wide on the first turn, inherited the lead when La Crete went wrong but faded late to finish fourth, a head behind Awake At Midnyte. Awake At Midnyte had a good spot behind Hidden Connection into the far turn but wound up caught between horses and lacked racing room much of the homestretch.
As for Turnerloose, she raced mid-pack among horses, following Goddess of Fire past the quarter pole and overtaking her in the final half-furlong for a half-length victory. Winning time for the 1 1/16 miles on a fast track was 1:44.22, a modest clocking. Three-year-old maidens in race 6 went the same distance in 1:44.11.
Turnerloose went off at more than 17-1 because she never had raced on dirt. By Nyquist out of Goaltending, by A.P. Indy, Turnerloose won a two-turn turf mile at Ellis Park in her career debut, then captured the $500,000 Juvenile Fillies at Kentucky Downs and finished second in the Jessamine Stakes at Keeneland. She was 14th in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, and as the winter rolled along Cox, who trains Turnerloose for Ike and Dawn Thrash, decided to give dirt a try.
“There weren’t many options for her on turf,” Cox said. “She worked well on dirt last fall leading up to the Jessamine. She was working lights-out on Churchill, and she’s bred top and bottom for dirt. But she won that half-million-dollar race [at Kentucky Downs] and we weren’t going to change anything.
Part of the Road to the Kentucky Oaks, the Rachel Alexandra had 85 qualifying points to the Oaks awarded 50-20-10-5 to the top four finishers. It remains to be seen if any of those points-earners proves truly to be Oaks quality.