Blessed Before She Started

So they ran two graded stakes with similar names (more on that in a sec) for 3-year-old fillies on the same card at Santa Anita on Sunday, which says a bucketful about how things have been going for those folks so far this winter. They're trying; you know they're trying, but the gods -- the weather ones, the cosmic ones, the synthetic ones -- are treating them mean.

They ran the Santa Ynez at seven furlongs as scheduled and also ran the Santa Ysabel at a mile and one-sixteenth as rescheduled from the week before. A Cal-bred filly named Final Fling upset the latter (that the Ysabel), turning back five rivals in the process. She's by Bertrando, a good sire; is trained by Jeff Mullins, a good trainer; and was ridden by Joseph Talamo, a stellar apprentice last year (see him at the Eclipse Awards) who has turned into a good journeyman at the ripe old age of 18. Final Fling in the Kentucky Oaks? Well, maybe. This is horse racing, you know, and that means most anything can happen. But you just might want to hold off ordering those lilies for now. Let's let things settle a bit.

But in the case of the other stakes -- the Ynez (not Ysabel)-- there was a bit more Oakie-Doking going on, once, that is, the right players got in the right places. A young lassie named Indian Blessing (see her at the Eclipse Awards, too) won the race, just as a 1-10 shot is supposed to. She did not, in fact, win it in the style you might expect a 1-10 shot to (a fast-diminishing head is not what the suitcase boys had in mind), but she did in fact get there on Sunday -- after having won the real battle several days before.

Seems as how Indian Blessing was entered into a 3-year-old filly stakes when the Sunday races were drawn all right, but turns out it wasn't the Ynez, but the Ysabel. How that might have happened for sure isn't quite sure, but we all know things happen and, as we also know, of late lots of things have been happening at that lovely oval in Arcadia. So the Ysabel, not the Ynez, is ready to go, when -- uh, oh -- there is much shouting and gnashing of teeth. Wrong filly in the race! you say. Oh, and she's going to be 1-10! you add. And she just won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies and.....OK, OK, we're getting the idea. Seven eights and not a mile and one sixteenth, yes, yes. Well then, as they've been know to tell those folks in Houston, it does appear we have a problem.

But problems can be solved -- in math class and at the entry booth -- and, with the help of three wise men, some basic detective work and the popping of new pills, all is made right. Halleluah brother. Amen.

That white-haired wonder Bob Baffert had a birthday Sunday. Turned 55, he did. And the racing gods (the good ones) brought him his gift early. That's Ynez, Ynez. Ya see. Just like you said it would be. And consider it a blessing.