Speedy Girls Know Best finds a home on turf

LEXINGTON, Ky. – It will again be catch me if you can for Girls Know Best when the former claimer brings her abundant speed to Keeneland for Thursday’s $80,000 main event, one of three turf allowances on the penultimate day of the 2018 spring meet.

Trainer Eddie Kenneally haltered Girls Know Best for what now appears a bargain $40,000 out of a win over Keeneland’s main track in October. The daughter of Caleb’s Posse had never raced on turf to that point, but has found a new home since switching to grass during the recently concluded Gulfstream Park championship meet.

Girls Know Best made three starts over Gulfstream’s speed-favoring turf course this winter, winning the Ladies Turf Sprint and finishing second in the Abundantia. She finished a tiring eighth against a very strong field that featured multiple stakes winners Blue Bahia and Morticia in her most recent outing on March 10. Girls Know Best set the pace in all three races.

“We claimed her because she was a sound, hard-knocking filly who had already won five races,” Kenneally said. “But we knew we also had the option to try her on the turf. Speed is her biggest weapon, which is why we went to five furlongs over the very firm turf at Gulfstream and she loved it. She ran against a better caliber of horses, some of the best turf sprint fillies in the country, and just got run down last time. But she’s doing great and hopefully she’ll take to this turf course as well as she did to the one down there. We also know she can run on the dirt, so if this weather persists, naturally she’ll be in there if this race comes off the turf.”

Girls Know Best will face six rivals in the 5 1/2-furlong headliner, which goes as the second race on the nine-race card. Her chief competition could come from Spellker, who has been idle since rallying to a three-length victory under slightly softer allowance conditions over a yielding course at Churchill Downs on Nov. 22. Spellker and Miss Gossip are the only members of the field to own a victory over the Keeneland turf course.

Completing the lineup are Natural Wonder, who returns to the turf for the first time in more than 18 months, Kyllachy Queen, Natural Wonder, Marquee Miss, and Ours to Run.

Thursday’s fifth race will also be at 5 1/2 furlongs under slightly easier allowance conditions, with Lawton, Mount Calvary, and Whiskey Bravo among the key contenders in a nine-horse field that features plenty of early speed.

The afternoon’s seventh event is for 3-year-old fillies at nine furlongs and has the multiple graded stakes winner Cash Out as the key player in a group that also includes the stakes-placed Drinks On Me and Starving Artist, along with the lightly raced but promising Romantic Moment. Romantic Moment won her only start on turf, which came earlier this winter at Gulfstream Park for Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey.