ARCADIA, Calif. – Led by race winner Take A Breath, three of the first four finishers from Saturday’s Grade 3 Royal Heroine Stakes at Santa Anita are expected to start in the Grade 1 Gamely Stakes for fillies and mares on turf on May 25. Run at 1 1/8 miles, the $300,000 Gamely is Santa Anita’s leading annual race for fillies and mares on turf. The Grade 1 American Oaks, worth $300,000 and run at 1 1/4 miles on turf in December, is limited to 3-year-old fillies. Take A Breath won her second consecutive stakes in the $102,000 Royal Heroine Stakes at a mile on turf, finishing a half-length in front of May Day Ready. Grand Slam Smile, who led or disputed the pace well into the stretch, faded to finish third by a length, a neck in front of Tirupati. Grand Slam Smile will not start in the Gamely, trainer Sean McCarthy said on Sunday. :: Santa Anita Classic Meet! Get DRF Past Performances, Clocker Reports, and more. Take A Breath will start in her third Grade 1 race within the last year in the Gamely. A 4-year-old British-bred filly, Take A Breath finished a fast-closing fourth in the Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks last August in her American debut and closed well to finish fourth in the American Oaks in December. Despite those losses, co-owner Tim Cohen has seen enough from Take A Breath this spring to think she deserves another chance in the Gamely. Take A Breath won her first stakes in the Grade 3 Santa Ana at 1 1/4 miles on turf on March 15. “I think she’s getting there,” Cohen said of her Grade 1 potential. “At a mile to a mile and a quarter, I think she’s fine. She’s just improving. She’s showed us what we thought she could do." Take A Breath is trained by Mark Glatt, who will start So Happy in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. So Happy won the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby on April 4. May Day Ready, a three-time stakes winner in Kentucky and New York in 2023 and 2024, had her first start for trainer Richard Mandella in the Royal Heroine. It was also her first start since a seventh-place finish in the Grade 3 Valley View Stakes at Keeneland last October. “I thought she ran very good,” Mandella said. “She might have gotten a little tired the last 100 yards.” Grand Slam Smile, the winner of two sprint stakes on turf for statebreds earlier this year, is likely to revert to the California-bred division. McCarthy mentioned the $100,000 Fran’s Valentine Stakes for statebred fillies and mares at a mile on turf on May 23 as an option. Tirupati is under consideration for the Gamely along with stablemate Rashmi, trainer Jonathan Thomas said. Tirupati raced on the inside for much of the Royal Heroine and was short of racing room at a pivotal point in early stretch. She closed ground in the final sixteenth to be closest to the front at the finish. “The first- and second-place fillies got the jump on her,” Thomas said. The Gamely has been won by shippers from Florida and Kentucky in two of the last four years. There is a possibility of a prominent out-of-town runner in this year’s field. The field is expected to include Thought Process, a four-time stakes winner, and Public Assembly, who won the 2025 Royal Heroine and was fourth behind Take A Breath in the Santa Ana. Thought Process has not raced since a two-length win in the Grade 2 Buena Vista Stakes at Santa Anita in February. Thought Process and Public Assembly are trained by Phil D’Amato. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.