Sweet Azteca looks to build on strong debut after long layoff in Las Flores

ARCADIA, Calif. – Sweet Azteca blasted her way to an impressive win in a six-furlong maiden race in her debut at Churchill Downs last May, leaving high hopes she would have a productive 2023 season.

She missed another start in 2023 by a day.

Sweet Azteca will have her stakes debut in Monday’s Grade 3 Las Flores Stakes for fillies and mares at six furlongs at Santa Anita, the feature race on a nine-race New Year’s Day program.

Sweet Azteca, who will be ridden for the first time by Frankie Dettori, is expected to set the pace as she did at Churchill Downs.

“The first start was awfully impressive,” trainer Michael McCarthy recalled Friday. “She ran big that day.

“We had a little trouble getting her back to the races. She’s come back and trained well. She’s had six nice works here, and it seems like things are going her way right now.”

Sweet Azteca, who races for owner and breeder Pamela Ziebarth, is by Sharp Azteca and out of So Sweetitiz, the winner of two sprint stakes for fillies and mares at Del Mar and Santa Anita in 2016.

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The field for the $100,000 Las Flores includes Lady T, who won the Las Flores on New Year’s Eve in 2022; Hot Peppers, who won the Grade 3 Victory Ride Stakes at Belmont Park in July 2022; Chismosa, a two-time winner in stakes for California-breds in 2022; and Violent Runner, who was second in the Grade 3 Desert Stormer Stakes for fillies and mares at six furlongs at Santa Anita last March.

The Las Flores Stakes is the California debut for Hot Peppers, a winner of 5 of 9 starts in Florida and New York in 2021 and 2022.

Hot Peppers has had a disrupted training schedule in the last 16 months. Previously trained by Rudy Rodriguez, Hot Peppers had a steady pattern of works in New York in the fall of 2022 before she was sent to California last spring.

Hot Peppers worked at Los Alamitos and Del Mar last spring and summer and was nearing a start at Del Mar last summer before she was given a rest, trainer Phil D’Amato said.

“We had a little issue and we had to back off,” D’Amato said. “It was one little thing after another and then there weren’t any races.”

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Hot Peppers has had eight workouts since late October, including five furlongs from the gate in a sharp 1:00 last Tuesday that D’Amato described “as a good breeze.”

Hot Peppers has frequently shown speed.

A rapid pace may help Lady T, who has not started since she finished sixth of nine in the Grade 3 Chillingworth Stakes for fillies and mares at 6 1/2 furlongs on Sept. 29 at Santa Anita. She closed from fifth in a field of eight to win the Las Flores in December 2022 and could be effective as a closer in a small field.

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