Win machine Lady Annabelle goes for eight straight in Disco Chick
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Lady Annabelle will go for her eighth consecutive victory in the $75,000 Disco Chick Stakes on Tuesday at Parx Racing. Claimed for $7,500 in March, the 6-year-old mare has since become a machine for trainer Ernesto Padilla-Preciado and picked up her first stakes victory last month.
“She's in even better shape right now, the way she's been responding to everything after the last race,” Preciado-Padilla said. “Believe me, she's very aggressive right now. I think this is her moment.”
Preciado-Padilla cross-entered Lady Annabelle on the Claiming Crown Day card at Churchill Downs on Saturday, but he said this past weekend that he was “80 percent” sure he would keep her home for another stakes attempt against Pennsylvania-breds. Last month, she won the $60,000 Commonwealth Sire by 1 3/4 lengths.
The 6-year-old mare had never attempted seven furlongs before her first stakes triumph, making her all the more dangerous ahead of her second try at the distance in the Disco Chick. The 9-5 morning-line favorite will break from the rail in the field of seven statebred fillies and mares.
“She’s already proven she can handle the seven-eighths,” Padilla-Preciado said. “I don't like the position we got this time, but I think she's going to handle it. She's pretty sharp out of there, so we have plenty of time to get her out from the rail.”
With seven straight victories so far in 2026, Lady Annabelle is not far behind another Parx-based runner, Kerness K, as the winningest horse in North America. That Jamie Ness-trained gelding has won 11 straight races in the Mid-Atlantic. Of the 16 horses who have earned exactly seven victories this year, Lady Annabelle has the highest earnings with $278,330.
Padilla-Preciado also entered the deep closer Angie’s Reward, but he said he might scratch the 3-year-old filly.
Nature’s Candy, the runner-up in the Commonwealth Sire last month, will take another crack at ending Lady Annabelle’s winning streak for trainer Hugo Padilla, Preciado-Padilla’s brother. The front-running mare won the Disco Chick by 2 1/2 lengths last year, though she was easily run down by Lady Annabelle when they last met.
Presenceisapresent and Carousel Queen, the third- and fifth-place finishers in the Commonwealth Sire, are also entered in the Disco Chick. Lady Annabelle defeated them by 6 1/4 and 10 1/2 lengths, respectively, last time out.
Trainer Mike Moore will give Mary Q a long-overdue chance to return to stakes company. In her second start off a nearly five-month layoff last time out, she won a $52,000 allowance by a head with a career-best 82 Beyer Speed Figure. Though she has finished well back in her two career stakes starts, she just missed in the $150,000 Stellar Wind Handicap at Colonial Downs last year.
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