Your Royal Flyness carries a family on her shoulders
A jockey cannot be more closely associated with a mount than Anne Sanguinetti is with Your Royal Flyness, who starts in Monday’s second race at Golden Gate Fields.
Sanguinetti’s family bred Your Royal Flyness. The filly races for Sanguinetti’s parents, John and Chris, residents of Hawaii.
Anne Sanguinetti rode the dam of Your Royal Flyness, Chronologic’sghost, to all four of her career wins at Golden Gate Fields in 2015 and 2016. Chronologic’sghost was second and third in three stakes at Remington Park and Emerald Downs with Sanguinetti aboard.
Your Royal Flyness, trained by Faith Taylor, is Chronologic’sghost’s first foal to race. Sanguinetti rode Your Royal Flyness to a fourth-place finish in a $25,000 claimer for maidens at Santa Rosa in August 2022, the filly’s only start as a 2-year-old.
“Her first start was a debacle,” Sanguinetti recalled on Friday. “She stood in the gate and didn’t break. She was a hundred miles behind going five-eighths. She never caught up.”
When Your Royal Flyness had her second start at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton on July 7, Sanguinetti was visiting family, in the midst of a three-month hiatus from race riding.
Jockey William Antongeorgi, a friend of Sanguinetti’s, deputized on her behalf in an $8,000 claimer for maidens.
When Your Royal Flyness was last of eight on the backstretch at odds of 22-1, Sanguinetti was not optimistic. On the turn, Your Royal Flyness began to close ground.
“I thought, oh, she’s going to beat a horse,” Sanguinetti said. “Then I thought, she’s going to get a piece.”
The outlook changed when Your Royal Flyness continued to close in the final furlong.
“Oh my god, she’s going to win,” Sanguinetti said as the race ended.
“I really don’t know what to expect. I didn’t expect her to win last time out.”
On Monday, Your Royal Flyness starts in a $16,000 claiming race for 3-year-old fillies at a mile, her first start at the distance and first race on the synthetic track at Golden Gate Fields.
“Anything could happen,” Sanguinetti said.
“When you work her, she goes the same speed the whole way. She’s not the fastest horse on the planet. I think she’ll get the distance.”
Sanguinetti said Chronologic’sghost stands 17.1 hands, while Your Royal Flyness is not as tall.
“She’s a lot smaller than her mother, but she’s got the all-legs build to her,” Sanguinetti said. “She has a lot in common with her mother, very immature and very long-legged and awkward.”
Sanguinetti, 42, has won 551 races in a career that began in 2003. For the most part, she has ridden in California and at Emerald Downs. Earlier this year, Sanguinetti took a break from race riding because of the longstanding effects of injuries to her pelvis and right hip.
“It was so bad that I didn’t want to ride any races,” she said. “I needed to let it calm down. I never stopped working horses on the weekends.
“I love the sport so much.”
Sanguinetti was not far from horses through the summer. She spends part of her week working with retired racehorses and has a Monday-through-Friday job doing legal work for a Bay Area company.
Sanguinetti has two mounts on Monday’s eight-race program, her first races since Memorial Day weekend.
Your Royal Flyness was an enticing lure to return to race riding, even if the filly is considered a long-term prospect.
“She’s still very much a little baby,” Sanguinetti said. “She’s 3, but she’s so immature. We won’t see the best of her until she’s 4 or 5.”
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