Tepin could use Hillsborough as springboard to Maker's 46 Mile

OLDSMAR, Fla. – Tepin looked every bit like the champion she is last Saturday at Tampa Bay Downs, scooting away from the field to win the Grade 3, $150,000 Endeavour Stakes by 3 1/2 lengths under Julien Leparoux. It was the first start for the 5-year-old Bernstein mare since she beat males in the Breeders’ Cup Mile on Oct. 31 to cap a 5-for-7 season in which she won four graded stakes and the Eclipse Award as North America’s top female turf runner.

Trainer Mark Casse said Tepin might come back here for the Grade 2, $200,000 Hillsborough Stakes, a 1 1/8-mile turf race for older fillies and mares March 12. Regardless of whether she runs in that race, Tepin is likely to face males again in the Grade 1 Maker’s 46 Mile on April 15 at Keeneland, where she won the Grade 1 First Lady Stakes and the Breeders’ Cup Mile last year.

“If Tepin got her way, she’d run again before [the Maker’s 46 Mile] because Tepin likes to run,” Casse said. “But whether she runs before that has yet to be determined. We’re going to look at the Hillsborough simply because she likes the Tampa turf course. A mile and an eighth is stretching her a bit, but it’s something to think about.”

Casse said that Lexie Lou, the 2014 Canadian Horse of the Year who finished last of six in the Endeavour, likely will be pointed to an allowance race next.

Meanwhile, Whatawonderflworld, who finished last of six in the Grade 3, $200,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes on Saturday in his first dirt race, likely will head to Turfway Park, Casse said. The horse had won two turf races and the $100,000 males’ division of the OBS Championship Stakes on the synthetic surface at the Ocala Training Center last month.

Whatawonderflworld is a candidate for the $100,000 John Battaglia Memorial Stakes on Turfway’s Polytrack on March 12, a prep for that track’s marquee event, the Grade 3 Spiral Stakes on April 2. The $500,000 Spiral Stakes is a prep for the Kentucky Derby.

Destin and Rafting, who finished first and second in the Sam F. Davis, are expected to return for the biggest race of the Tampa meet, the Grade 2, $350,000 Tampa Bay Derby on March 12.