Wild Gams executes trainer's game plan

Jockey Ryan Fogelsonger carefully followed the instructions trainer Ben Perkins Jr. gave him before riding Wild Gams for the first time. As a result, Wild Gams turned the tables on heavily favored Wildcat Bettie B, snapping her rival's three-stakes winning streak.

Perfectly positioned behind a three-way pace battle turning for home, Wild Gams ($14) closed strongly, ran down G City Gal inside the sixteenth pole, and held off Wildcat Bettie B by three-quarters of a length in Saturday's Grade 3, $200,000 for 3-year-old fillies at Laurel Park.

In July at Belmont Park, Wildcat Bettie B outfought Wild Gams by a neck in the Grade 1 Prioress, the second of three straight graded stakes she captured for Delaware Park-based trainer Larry Jones.

In the rematch, Perkins told Fogelsonger to be patient.

"When Wildcat Bettie B beat us she just lapped outside of us on the turn," Perkins said. "I felt she was the horse to beat and I told Ryan, 'Whatever you do, wait just as long as you can and keep her inside of you where we'll be able to clear her. She'll have to try and come around us.' "

The tactics worked perfectly. Wild Gams got the jump on Wildcat Bettie B, who had dropped back to sixth with a quarter-mile remaining.

"When it was time to go at the three-eighths pole, she hopped up and down and I couldn't get her level," said jockey Mario Pino, who rode Wildcat Bettie B. "When she took to the right lead she took off but it was too late."

Wild Gams, coming off a win in a New Jersey-bred stakes at Monmouth Park last month, covered six furlongs on the fast track in 1:09.93.

Wildcat Bettie B, sent off at even-money, rallied belatedly to get second, a head in front of the Todd Pletcher-trained G City Gal.

Wild Gams, owned by New Farm, is now 6 for 12 lifetime, including the Grade 3 Cicada at Aqueduct, with earnings of $405,206.