Street Fancy, Pacific Heat avoid facing Songbird

ARCADIA, Calif. – The perceived superiority of Songbird in the Grade 3 Santa Ysabel on Saturday at Santa Anita will push two good fillies into other races. Grade 1 winner Street Fancy will scratch; multiple statebred stakes winner Pacific Heat did not enter.

The reason is undefeated Songbird.

“If she runs, I’m not going to run,” said Phil D’Amato, Street Fancy’s trainer. “She’s going to run in the Fair Grounds Oaks [on March 26]. It’s a long, long stretch, similar to Los Alamitos.”

Street Fancy won the Grade 1 Starlet at Los Alamitos and then misfired in Grade 2 Las Virgenes after she banged her head in the gate and ran last.

“She was zonked,” D’Amato said.

D’Amato said Friday that he planned to scratch Street Fancy and work her Saturday morning.

Pacific Heat, romping winner of the California Cup Oaks on Jan. 30, will stay on turf.

“We’re not going to run against” Songbird, said Peter Eurton, Pacific Heat’s trainer. “I thought it would be a good experiment to get her back on dirt again, but not with [Songbird] in it.”

Eurton said Pacific Heat will run March 12 in the $75,000 China Doll, a one-mile turf race.

“For now,” Eurton said of the plan to stay on turf. “We could go to dirt next time.”