Xigera fine after misfire in La Troienne

The bad news is Xigera was all but eased making her first start as a 4-year-old in the Grade 1 La Troienne on May 3 at Churchill. The good news is her connections found nothing wrong with the filly.

Xigera went off as the second choice in the La Troienne but was never in contention, crossing the finish some 40 lengths behind the favored winner, Idiomatic, while racing over a sloppy track for the first time. Xigera, a turf horse to start her career, had won three in a row – the Seneca overnight, the Grade 2 Mother Goose, and the Grade 3 Falls City – after being switched to dirt last season.

“All we can come up with is the track,” Philip Bauer, who trains Xigera for Rigney Racing, said Thursday. Jockey Julien Leparoux “felt once she came off the bridle around the half-mile pole, she just started spinning her wheels. By the quarter pole it was a known fact she wasn’t handling it, and he just galloped her in. She scoped fine, bounced out of it very well. She did gallop a mile today full of energy.”

This was the third clunker Xigera has thrown in an otherwise stellar career. She ran poorly in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, and floundered last summer over a soft Saratoga grass course.

Bauer said Xigera is nominated to the Shawnee Stakes on June 1 at Churchill.

“We’ll see where we’re at with her. It’s thrown us for a loop with how bad she ran,” Bauer said.

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