Road warrior Flying Connection hits town in top form for the Bed o' Roses

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Flying Connection has certainly done her fair share of traveling throughout her career, racking up stakes wins across the Southwest and acquitting herself quite well in Grade 1 stakes in Arkansas and Kentucky.

Saturday, Flying Connection makes a stop in New York with the goal of attaining her first graded stakes win and perhaps auditioning for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint when she starts in the Grade 2, $200,000 Bed o’ Roses Stakes going seven furlongs at Aqueduct.

The Bed o’ Roses drew a surprisingly large field of 10, including the rejuvenated Grade 1 winner Leave No Trace, the Grade 1-placed Big Pond, and Mid-Atlantic stakes winners Morning Matcha and Apple Picker.

In her previous six starts, Flying Connection has won stakes at Albuquerque, Sunland Park, and Zia Park while earning graded placings at Del Mar, Oaklawn Park, and Churchill Downs. She recently passed class tests in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom at Oaklawn, finishing second to Adare Manor, and in the Grade 1 Derby City Distaff at Churchill Downs, finishing third to Vahva. The Apple Blossom has produced three next-out stakes winners while the only two fillies to run back from the Derby City Distaff have won listed stakes.

Todd Fincher trained Flying Connection for her first 15 starts. Rob Atras will be the trainer of record Saturday. Atras said he helped out Fincher in Kentucky and the owners wanted to try this race in New York so they sent Flying Connection to him at Belmont Park.

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“I’m trying to keep her happy and healthy. I told the owners Todd’s made almost a million dollars with this filly. I’m not trying to change anything with her,” Atras said. “We spaced her works out like he’d done, she looks great, she’s worked good. I’m just hoping she runs like she did before.”

In the Derby City Distaff, Flying Connection raced between horses in fifth under Florent Geroux. She lost some position around the far turn before re-rallying in the stretch to get third, 2 3/4 lengths behind Vahva.

“No one’s fault, she had a little bit of a tough trip,” Atras said. “She had to race between horses. Once she straightened away she was going after the leaders.”

Ricardo Santana Jr., aboard for the runner-up finish in the Apple Blossom, rides Flying Connection from post 6 Saturday.

Leave No Trace won the Grade 1 Spinaway in 2022 and was nearly retired before she won an allowance race at Aqueduct in March. Leave No Trace followed that with a three-quarter-length victory in the Grade 3 Vagrancy to improve her record to 4 for 4 sprinting.

Trainer Phil Serpe would like to point Leave No Trace to the Grade 1 Ballerina this summer at Saratoga and believes this race will give him a better line on that plan.

“I think it’s the right group to see if she’ll continue to move forward,” Serpe said. “If you get into races like the Ballerina you’re going to go against the very best fillies sprinting.”

Big Pond, beaten a nose in the Grade 1 La Brea at Santa Anita in December, rallied from last to finish second to Leave No Trace as the favorite in the Vagrancy, her first start for trainer Bill Mott.

“She took herself back,” Mott said of Big Pond’s style in the Vagrancy.

Morning Matcha took advantage of being a Pennsylvania-bred by a New York-based stallion [Central Banker] to win restricted stakes at Aqueduct and Parx in her previous starts. She finished second in the Grade 1 Cotillion in the fall of 2022 and third in the Delaware Handicap last summer.

“Lately she prefers the one turn, and seven-eighths is the perfect distance for her,” trainer Butch Reid said. “We used the same race that we did last year as a kick-off point. She came out of it great. If there ever was a chance to take a shot, this is the time.”

Apple Picker has won two of three starts this year, including the Grade 3 Barbara Fritchie at Laurel Park in February and the Skipat in May. In between she finished fourth to Shidabhuti in the Grade 3 Distaff at Aqueduct.

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Shidabhuti is one of two in this field for trainer Chad Brown, who also sends out Accede, a winner of a second-level allowance at Keeneland in April.

Hot Fudge and Beguine, third and fourth, respectively, in the Vagrancy, and Just Katherine complete the field.

The Vagrancy goes as race 10 on an 11-race card that begins at 12:35 p.m.

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