Oaklawn Park racegoers have come to expect something special whenever the subject turns to older fillies and mares.
Although shippers Stellar Wind and Forever Unbridled have won the last two runnings of the Apple Blossom Handicap, locally based horses have excelled recently in Oaklawn's preps for the Grade 1 race. Terra Promessa and Streamline, to name two, have held their form long enough to develop a following in Hot Springs. Sure enough, they're among the seven older distaffers entered in today's Grade 3 $150,000 Bayakoa, with Terra Promessa the defending champion.
But after denying Terra Promessa a second consecutive Pippin victory Jan. 13, Farrell looms as perhaps the one to beat in the Bayakoa, which like the previous race is 1 1/16 miles. A 4-year-old dark bay or brown homebred daughter of Malibu Moon, Farrell is a jewel of consistency, winning seven of 11 starts and more than $800,000 for Kentucky-based Coffeepot Stables LLC. In her Oaklawn debut, she took the Pippin by three quarters of a length as a rare front-running winner on opening weekend at the track.
Trainer Wayne Catalano said afterward that, in case anyone doubted, neither the Pippin nor the Bayakoa was Farrell's major spring objective, but instead the $700,000 Apple Blossom Handicap April 13. Black type from that Grade 1 test would enhance the quality of stallions the winner is apt to receive after becoming a broodmare.
Channing Hill, Catalano's son-in-law, keeps the mount on Farrell, a six-time stakes winner whose only hiccup came when 14th in the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks last year over a sloppy Churchill Downs surface.
Early forecasts indicated a 100-percent chance of rain today, though Catalano says, "I'm not too worried about it. She's won on it at the Fair Grounds (New Orleans)."
Streamline had some traffic problems when third in the Pippin, which she won in 2016, but was disadvantaged mostly, trainer Brian Williamson said, when Farrell kept going after pressured early. The 6-year-old Straight Line mare hopes to pick up the pieces today over a track that she is 2-2-5 in nine starts (also winning the 2017 Grade 2 Azeri) and over which she has earned $545,000. Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens stays aboard the Illinois-bred runner, whose owners include breeder Nancy Vanier, widow of prominent Midwest trainer Harvey Vanier.
Terra Promessa is five for eight at Oaklawn, matching her career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 97 in last year's Bayakoa when winning by almost five lengths. A strong second to Stellar Wind in last year's Apple Blossom, the 5-year-old daughter of Curlin placed fifth in the Pippin last month after not racing since July. Owned by Barbara Banke's Stonestreet Stables LLC and trained by Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen, Terra Promessa is a multiple Grade 3 winner of almost $880,000. Ricardo Santana Jr., who has ridden the bay mare to three Oaklawn stakes victories, stays aboard.
Others in the Bayakoa are Polar River, a Brendan Walsh trainee making her second start in North America after racing in Dubai, with Luis Contreras aboard; Texas stakes winner Sully's Dream, Fernando De La Cruz; last-out Oaklawn winner Torrent, David Cohen; and Defy, a last-out $40,000 claim by trainer Chris Hartman and getting track leader David Cabrera in the saddle.
Sports on 02/17/2018