War Like Goddess repeats in Glens Falls
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- After more than three months away from the races, War Like Goddess was eager to show her stuff in the Grade 2, $250,000 Glens Falls Stakes Saturday on the Saratoga turf.
"Let's just say she was on the bridle," trainer Bill Mott said with a grin.
War Like Goddess was a repeat winner of the Glens Falls in easier fashion than the 1 1/4-length margin suggested, rallying into a dawdling pace and edging away in the final stages with Joel Rosario sitting like a statue in the irons.
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“She wasn't running off, but she was into the bridle pretty good,” Mott said. “They were going slow. Obviously, a faster pace is going to make her look better at the end, but she was still good enough to close into that pace.”
Millionaire War Like Goddess ($2.80), a 5-year-old English Channel mare campaigned by George Krikorian, has now won 8 of 10 career starts, including six graded stakes. Four of those, including the Glens Falls and the Grade 1 Flower Bowl at Saratoga, came last year to make her an Eclipse Award finalist. The award ultimately went to Japan's Loves Only You, who edged My Sister Nat and favored War Like Goddess by half-length in the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Del Mar.
War Like Goddess began this campaign with a repeat victory in the Grade 3 Bewitch on April 29 at Keeneland. However, while training at Churchill Downs, she experienced an episode of tying up, painful muscle cramps. The break in her training schedule kept out of her next target, the Grade 1 New York Stakes on June 10 at Belmont.
War Like Goddess has been steadily breezing since returning to the work tab June 6 at Saratoga. Mott entered her in the $150,000 River Memories at Belmont on July 10, but that race did not fill.
In her return in the Glens Falls, War Like Goddess and Rosario, who has ridden her in both starts this year, were fourth and about 2 1/2 lengths back as Key Biscayne meandered unchallenged through early splits of 25.26 seconds for the opening quarter, 51.53 for the half, and 1:42.33 for the mile. Rosario had his feet in front of him the first time by the stands as he tactfully kept War Like Goddess under a hold behind the slow early pace.
“You always worry about if they’re going fast enough up front to give her a good pace, and you don’t want him to have to wrestle with her to keep her back off the pace,” Mott said of watching the race unfold. “But he did a good job. Joel has good hands. She responded well to him, and when he asked her to go on, she was there for him.”
War Like Goddess began to move up on the outside around the final turn, and had moved into a close second off Key Biscayne by the quarter pole. She extended her neck in front and began to edge clear, easily holding sway in the final yards over multiple stakes winner Temple City Terror, who had made a creditable rally after being sixth at the quarter pole.
“The pace was slow, but the whole time, I had confidence in her, and when I turned her loose and wanted to go, she went,” Rosario said. “She was running really nice for me, and I just had to stay with her like that. She felt the confidence, and I just went with that. She’s just amazing.”
The final time for the 1 1/2 miles on a turf course still rated firm, prior to rain that moved in shortly afterward, was 2:29.33. War Like Goddess was given a 95 Beyer Speed Figure.
Temple City Terror held second by half-length over second choice Virginia Joy, a multiple graded stakes winner. Flanigan's Cove, the fading Key Biscayne, Treasure Tails, and Petrichor, also trained by Mott, founded out the order of finish.
The Glens Falls is likely to serve as a stepping stone for War Like Goddess into another graded stakes at Saratoga this meet -- either a repeat effort in the downgraded Grade 2, $600,000 Flower Bowl at 1 3/8 miles on Sept. 3 or the Grade 1, $750,000 Sword Dancer against males on Aug. 27. The Sword Dancer, like the Glens Falls, is at 1 1/2 miles, a distance at which War Like Goddess is unbeaten.
"It's a mile and a half, and it's a Grade 1," Mott said in discussing his options. "She's a Grade 1 winner already, but unfortunately - the Flower Bowl has been a Grade 1 for as long as I've been in New York, I believe, and they downgraded it, which is a very big disappointment. There's been some really top fillies run in that race, and why they downgraded it, I can't tell you."