Roses for Debra starts 5-year-old season with Giant’s Causeway victory

Roses for Debra won the first four races of her career, won her first four races during 2023, and began her 5-year-old season with yet another win Saturday at Keeneland, rallying stoutly through the final furlong under Irad Ortiz Jr. to capture the Grade 3, $260,713 Giant’s Causeway Stakes by 1 1/4 lengths.

The mare is a win machine, her record now standing at a glittering 12-8-1-1. She races for Cheyenne Stable and John O’Meara, O’Meara having owned the mare since the start of her career in May 2022, Everett Dobson’s Cheyenne buying in after Roses for Debra lost for the first time while making her fifth start. That race marked her first on dirt following four easy wins over the Tapeta surface at Presque Isle Downs, and when Roses for Debra returned following a winter break, her new trainer, Christophe Clement, moved her to turf.

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As good as Roses for Debra had been on synthetic, she is better on grass, winning two allowance races last year before definitive stakes scores at Saratoga in the Caress and the Smart N Fancy. Roses for Debra finished her campaign with two losses, a ninth in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint following her well-beaten third in the Turf Monster, run over a yielding, laboring course at Parx Racing.

Keeneland’s turf on Friday might have been equally soft, but a day of sunshine dried the course remarkably for Saturday racing, horses posting lively fractional and final times. The pace in the 5 1/2-furlong Giant’s Causeway was fast for any kind of ground, longshot B G Warrior ripping off fractions of 21.28 and 44.29 seconds, chased by Port Townsend and Elm Drive. Breaking from post 7, Ortiz slid Roses for Debra down to the inside rail before the turn, and Roses for Debra looked like a winner at the three-furlong marker.

Steered outside for the stretch run, Roses for Debra went briefly flat, giving assistant trainer Christophe Lorieul a moment of concern before kicking into top gear to win comfortably.

“She was a touch rusty at the three-sixteenths pole, but from the eighth pole on she was good, won going away,” Lorieul said.

Love Reigns rallied from mid-pack for second, one length in front of Elm Drive, who did best among the early pace players. Favored Roses for Debra paid $5.52.

Bred in Pennsylvania by Blackstone Farm, Roses for Debra is by Liam’s Map out of Essential Rose, by Bernardini. Ineligible for the $50,000 portion of the Giant’s Causeway purse offered only to Kentucky-breds, Roses for Debra still picked up a $141,000 check, blasting her past the half million-dollar mark in career earnings. Winning most of your races will do that.

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