Spanish Loveaffair looks to cash in on promise in Lake Placid
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Mark Casse is hopeful what has started out as a frustrating season for Spanish Loveaffair will take a turn for the better Saturday at Saratoga when she takes on just five rivals including likely favorite Technical Analysis in the $200,000 Lake Placid.
Spanish Loveaffair gave every indication there would be even better things to come during her 3-year-old campaign when she won two of her four starts at 2 while also finishing second in the Grade 2 Jessamine and sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf.
And that seemed to be the case after Spanish Loveaffair opened the season crossing the finish line first in Gulfstream Park’s Grade 3 Herecomesthebride, only to be disqualified and placed fourth following a somewhat controversial decision by the stewards precipitated by a bumping incident on the far turn.
The well-traveled Spanish Loveaffair has made three subsequent starts in 2021, finishing sixth after stumbling at the start of the Grade 2 Appalachian, a close second after leading until late stretch in the Grade 3 Regret and sixth in the loaded Grade 1 Belmont Oaks Invitational, a race from which the top two finishers, Santa Barbara and Con Lima, have since returned to win the Grade 1 Beverly D. and Grade 3 Saratoga Oaks, respectively.
“The year started out in a frustrating manner for her after the disqualification at Gulfstream and has continued that way ever since,” Casse admitted. “I was even hoping that by cutting back in distance to a mile and a sixteenth in this race there would be some speed for her to sit and rate behind since she was very rank early on in the Belmont Oaks. But there’s really not. So it looks like she may be going to the lead herself, which sometimes isn’t the worst thing. I just don’t want to see the rider have to grab her, since she really didn’t settle at all in the Oaks.”
With her regular jockey Tyler Gaffalione taking the call on Ego Trip in the Grade 2 Lake Placid, Ricardo Santana Jr. will have the mount for the first time on Saturday.
With several inches of rain having fallen earlier in the week, Casse is also uncertain what the course condition might be like for the race.
“She broke her maiden over a course at Gulfstream that had some give to it,” said Casse. “I don’t know if it’s her preferred surface, but at least we know she can handle it.”
Technical Analysis is the only graded stakes winner in the lineup and is exiting her best effort to date, a 1 1/4-length decision over Fluffy Socks when turning back to a mile in the Grade 3 Lake George earlier in the session, for which she earned a career-best 90 Beyer Speed Figure. The win was the third in the last four starts for the lightly raced but steadily improving filly, who is trained by Chad Brown and will carry top weight of 122 pounds under the allowance conditions of the Lake Placid.
Like Spanish Loveaffair, Technical Analysis has shown some affinity for a less-than-firm course, having won her maiden over a “good” strip in her 2-year-old finale last fall at Aqueduct.
Stakes winners Runaway Rumour and Lovestruck, the improving Illiogami, and the lightly raced Ego Trip, who is still a maiden, complete the compact lineup.
Runaway Rumour finished fourth, less than three lengths behind Technical Analysis in the Lake George and will stretch to 1 1/16 miles for the first time in the rematch. She rallied from the rear of the field to capture the one-mile Wild Applause earlier this summer at Belmont Park.
Lovestruck won her debut in impressive fashion, overcoming an eventful trip here last summer before closing out a brief but perfect juvenile campaign with a victory in Aqueduct’s Tepin Stakes in late November. She has started just once at 3, finishing eighth, four lengths behind Runaway Rumour after pressing the pace in the Wild Applause. She will compete without blinkers for the first time in the Lake Placid.
Illiogami returns to turf for the first time at 3 in the Lake Placid, while Ego Trip will try to win her maiden in a graded stakes following a big effort in defeat when arguably best making her U.S. debut here four weeks earlier.