It has been a good news, bad news, good news couple weeks for trainer Cherie DeVaux. DeVaux has a couple of Grade 1-winning fillies, She Feels Pretty and Vahva, working at Keeneland toward their first starts of 2025. Racing at Keeneland this April, however, has not gone DeVaux’s way. After winning five races the last two Keeneland meets, she enters the final week of the spring meet with one win from 22 starts, a far cry from her excellent winter at Fair Grounds, where DeVaux’s barn notched 22 winners from just 79 runners. Worse still, a horse DeVaux considered a future stakes performer, Seaport Lane, failed to finish his April 8 first-level allowance, in which he started as an even-money favorite. Seaport Lane stopped suddenly because he was in atrial fibrillation and having what turned out to be a relatively minor heart attack. The good news: The horse will make a full recovery, although he’s been retired from racing. “Kudos to everyone involved in that situation. It took six or seven hours to get [his heart] back into a rhythm,” DeVaux said. :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. DeVaux’s team this week is putting the finishing touches on She Feels Pretty’s preparation for her 4-year-old debut, which comes May 2 in the $400,000 Modesty Stakes at Churchill Downs. Leading the prospective competition in that nine-furlong contest are the one-two finishers from the Hillsborough Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs, Saffron Moon and Gimme a Nother. She Feels Pretty comes into her 2025 campaign as the most exciting older female turf horse in North America. Making her first start at a distance of 1 1/8 miles, She Feels Pretty won the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland last fall by six lengths, earning a 100 Beyer Speed Figure, the highest Beyer of the year posted by a North American-based 3-year-old turf-route filly. She Feels Pretty shipped to California for her season finale, stretched to 1 1/4 miles, and captured the Grade 1 American Oaks by 2 1/2 lengths, earning a 99 Beyer. “She’s always trained really well, and she’s come back and looks fantastic,” DeVaux said. “I’m not saying her first race off the bench is going to be her best, but she’s definitely doing well.” Vahva last spring used a second in the Madison Stakes at Keeneland as a stepping-stone toward her win in the Grade 1 Derby City Distaff at Churchill , but this year the Derby City Distaff will mark her first start of the season. Vahva’s 2024 campaign ended modestly, with an eighth in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, but the mare has won all four of her Churchill starts and excels at the Derby City Distaff’s seven-furlong distance. Not great news, but nothing too bad for Vahva’s 3-year-old sister, Ahavah. Most recently second in the Fair Grounds Oaks, her second career start and first around two turns, Ahavah came up with a case of tendinitis, DeVaux said, and has not worked since her race on March 22. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.