Significant Form gets up in time to win Intercontinental

ELMONT, N.Y. – The plans laid months ago for Significant Form unfolded Thursday at Belmont Park just as her connections envisioned.

In races at 1 1/8 and 1 1/4 miles last year at age 3, Significant Form didn’t want to relax. She’d pull too hard early and run the finishing kick out of herself before the homestretch even came. Trainer Chad Brown and jockey Irad Ortiz figured if Significant Form got in a shorter, faster-paced race she could go along at the speed she preferred, stalk the leaders, and finish strong. And that’s exactly what she did in the seven-furlong Intercontinental Stakes.

It wasn’t completely straightforward. Significant Form was trapped behind a wall of horses in upper stretch, Ortiz eventually diving toward the rail for a clearer path. The filly’s course to the wire then was obstructed by pace-setting Fire Key and pace-pressing Broadway Run, but a gap opened between those two, Significant Form hit it hard, and she went on to a sharp half-length score in this Grade 3, $200,000 turf race.

“We were talking about this all winter, cutting her back,” said Brown, who trains the filly for Stephanie Seymour Brant. “She’d been one-paced down the lane in some of her races.”

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The Intercontinental shaped slow early, fast late, with pace-setting Fire Key getting the best of things through an opening quarter mile in a tepid 23.03 seconds. The half-mile went in a moderate 45.99 as Significant Form raced midpack, spring-loaded but not straining on the bit. This time, when it came time to do real running, Significant Form was ready and able.

“I had a lot of horse and when you have that much horse, they give you confidence to sit there and wait,” said Ortiz, who has ridden Significant Form in all nine of her starts.

Off a six-furlong split of 1:08.46, Significant Form, who paid $6.90 as the favorite, was timed over firm turf in 1:19.83, flying her final furlong in just over 11 seconds. Fire Key held well for second, a neck in front of another Brown-trained filly, Stella di Camelot, who came from seventh at the stretch call and ran at least as well as the winner after getting mildly pinched to the back of the field down the backstretch.

Significant Form is by Creative Cause and out of Church by the Sea, a Harlan’s Holiday mare. She showed talent from the start, winning her first two races at 2, and was favored at 3-1 in the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks Invitational last summer. That race over 1 1/4 miles brought out Significant Form’s flaws. The seven-furlong Intercontinental showed her at her best.