Start key to Gilded Gold's win

Gilded Gold holds off Bright Gold to win Saturday's on the Lexington undercard at Keeneland.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Alan Goldberg knows something about fast mares. As the trainer of the 1990 Eclipse sprint champion, Safely Kept, Goldberg is an old hand at winning stakes races with lightning-quick females.

Saturday, following a very fast break from the Keeneland starting gate, the Goldberg-trained Gilded Gold went on to a three-quarter-length triumph in the $114,600 Giant's Causeway Stakes on the Lexington Stakes undercard. After being loaded with a blanket, a method to calm a horse that was made famous by "The Horse Whisperer," Monty Roberts, Gilded Gold used that bullet-like start to full advantage when taking the measure of the ultra-fleet Unbridled Sidney before holding off Bright Gold, the 3-1 favorite.

Javier Castellano rode Gilded Gold, a 5-year-old Gilded Time mare who paid $14.80 after finishing the 5 1/2 furlongs in 1:02.81 over a good turf course.

"She broke out of the gate very well," Castellano said in understatement.

Ebony Breeze finished third, another 1 3/4 lengths behind Bright Gold in the field of 12 fillies and mares. Unbridled Sidney, the 3-1 second choice, faded to sixth.

In other Saturday races, Ultimate Goal ($2.60) won a first-level allowance route for trainer Todd Pletcher and jockey Rafael Bejarano, and Del Mar Show ($24.60) rallied under Julien Leparoux to win a classified allowance route for older turf horses for trainer D. Wayne Lukas.