Santa Barbara's distance extended to 1 1/2 miles

ARCADIA, Calif.– The Grade 3 Santa Barbara Stakes for fillies and mares at Santa Anita will be run for the first time in two years on Sunday and at a new distance.

The $100,000 Santa Barbara was previously run at 1 1/4 miles on turf and has been lengthened to 1 1/2 miles. The race now has a unique position on the California calendar as the longest graded stakes on turf for fillies and mares.

Del Mar has the Grade 3 Red Carpet Handicap at 1 3/8 miles on turf for fillies and mares in November. The Grade 1 Rodeo Drive Stakes at 1 1/4 miles on turf is run at Santa Anita in late September or early October.

The Santa Barbara was not run in 2016, when Los Alamitos ran a three-week meeting in April and early May.

Sunday’s race is projected to have a field of at least six, including two minor stakes winners – Estrechada, in Argentina in 2015, and Evo Campo, who won the Possibly Perfect Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on turf here last June.

Estrechada was second in the Astra Stakes at 1 1/2 miles for fillies and mares on turf Feb. 2 and was fifth of eight in the Grade 1 Santa Margarita Invitational on dirt March 18.

The likely favorite is Place des Vosges, a winner of optional claimers at 1 1/4 miles on turf Feb. 24 and 1 1/8 miles on turf March 26. Trained by Richard Baltas for Abbondanza Racing, Place des Vosges was sixth in the Ladies Marathon Stakes at Kentucky Downs last September in her only previous start in a stakes. She joined Baltas’s stable in January.