Oaks Blogs

So the racing office staff is out shaking trees on the backstretch at Santa Anita hoping that a spare 3-year-old filly or two might fall out. They need a couple of extra for next Sunday’s Grade I Santa Anita Oaks at a mile and one sixteenth.

A racetrack loves to have a good horse --- no, make that a real good horse – on the grounds for bragging rights. But sometimes that real good horse can come back and bite you, such as when the perception is that horse is unbeatable and nobody wants to take a shot at her in your next big race.

Right now Rags to Riches, the flashy chestnut daughter of A.P. Indy, is being seen as a good – no make that real good – horse, the kind nobody wants to mess with. Gee, you say, she’s only raced three times with a pair of wins, including a mere maiden race. True, but that other tally was in a Grade I (the Las Virgenes Stakes at Santa Anita February 10) in which she raced wider than a fat man’s love handles and still came running to get the money going a mile. There are some additional spices in the stew, too, like the fact that she cost $1.9-million at auction, races for the Todd Pletcher juggernaut and gets the country’s leading rider, Garrett Gomez, as her dance partner.

So they’re running and hiding at the Great Race Place, not wanting anything to do with the “Big Mare.”

There are a couple, at least, who have declared their intentions to take her on – and the guess is there might be a few more yet to come who might give her a try for a $300,000 purse and a chunk of that black type.

Runway Rosie and Cash Included, who chased “Rags” home in the Las Virgenes, have indicated they’ll give it at least one more try. Rosie, a gray daughter of the
Broad Brush sire Include, has a seasoning edge – the S.A. Oaks will be her eighth start. She underlined her intentions Sunday on Hollywood Park’s Cushion Track by working a bullet six furlongs in 1:12.40. Cash Included also stretched her legs Sunday at Hollywood, covering seven panels in 1:27.40. Already a Grade I winner herself (Oak Leaf B.C. Stakes last fall), the dark filly is – surprisingly enough – also a daughter of the Broad Brush sire Include.

The racing office also has gotten a “maybe” from wily veteran trainer Bruce Headly concerning his filly Silver Swallow, who ran fast (1:22.80) to beat maidens last out on February 18. Headly – as has been his style for many a year in the racing game -- might be going against the grain and thinking he can do some good with his Alphabet Soup filly now rather than later.

If you’re going to beat the “Big Mare,” you’d better get her when you can – and do a lot of hoping that she can’t.