Trainer Cox notches Pan Zareta exacta
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On paper, trainer Brad Cox had a front-runner, Goldberry, and a closer, Contributing, for Saturday's $75,000 Pan Zareta Stakes at Fair Grounds. Then the starting gate opened, Goldberry stumbled, and suddenly Cox had two closers. Five and a half furlongs later, he also had the Pan Zareta exacta, as 10-1 Contributing just held off 8-5 Goldberry in this turf sprint for older fillies and mares.
It was not just an exacta sweep for Cox, but a one-two stakes finish with horses new to his barn. Goldberry had been racing in Kentucky while Contributing, second in the 2018 Pan Zareta, resided in the Fair Grounds barn of trainer Tom Proctor when she returned from a long layoff with an 11th-place finish Dec. 1 in the Richie Scherer Memorial.
Contributing bounced right back to form Saturday under Joe Bravo, racing near the back of the field with unlucky Goldberry, as Brielle’s Appeal, pushed by Stonefactor, went 21.93 for the first quarter-mile. The main actors, though, remained far behind, with Goldberry having to steady into the turn, adding a further layer of difficulty to a trip already compromised by what jockey Florent Geroux told Cox was a “pretty bad” stumble.
Bravo, on the other hand, was pretty much where he expected to be, and as Geroux had to peel many, many paths off the rail to make his run with Goldberry, Bravo hugged the fence cornering for home, went through a large gap between horses at about the eighth pole, came together with wide-closing Goldberry, and just got the better of the favorite.
“She acted great the entire time,” Bravo said. “Confident and relaxed.”
The official winning margin was a head as Contributing ran about 5 1/2 furlongs over a course rated yielding (but probably closer to “good”) in 1:03.85. Excessivespending turned in an improved performance to finish third, one length behind the top two but well clear of fourth-place One Last Shot.
Contributing ($22.40) is a 5-year-old mare by Medaglia d’Oro and out of the Halo mare Taegu who’s owned by the Heider Family Trust. She won for the fourth time in 12 starts and, by capturing her first stakes, boosted her residual value as a broodmare – even if her stablemate ran the best race in the Pan Zareta.
