ABEL TASMAN WITHSTANDS INQUIRY, WINS 3RD GRADE 1
SARATOGA SPRINGS » As the winner of consecutive Grade 1s in the Kentucky Oaks and Acorn Stakes, Abel Tasman was expected to be a solid favorite in Sunday’s featured $300,000 Coaching Club American Oaks. But when the Quality Road filly was bet down to 4-5 from her 8-5 status on the morning line, it perhaps left her with something to prove.
Abel Tasman got the job done all right, but it wasn’t easy. Not only did she have to survive a stiff challenge from Elate – who gave her all she wanted over the final furlong – but she also had to wait out a five-minute steward’s inquiry and jockey’s objection. When it was announced there would be no change in the order of finish, Abel Tasman had won her third straight Grade 1.
“Wow, what a race,” exclaimed Jimmy Barnes, assistant to winning trainer Bob Baffert. “Abel is a phenomenal filly. We’re blessed to have her. She’s come through each and every time. She’s had to travel three times now, and that says a lot for her.
Abel Tasman and second choice Salty both got out of the gate slowly. Summer Luck showed the way through a 23.81-second opening half, but partway down the backstretch, Mike Smith decided to pick up the pace, and so sent Abel Tasman (who had moved up from sixth) around Summer Luck, taking a short lead that carried her around the turn.
Turning for home, after putting away Summer Luck, Abel Tasman set sail down the stretch. While she motored along out toward the center of the track, Elate crept up the rail and appeared to draw even at one point. Smith guided his mount over to meet the challenge, and the two fillies went at it over the last eighth. It looked like there might have been contact, and at one point Elate seemed to check slightly. For the judges, however, it was a case of, “no harm, no foul.”
“It’s just good old-fashioned race-riding,” Smith explained. “By no means did I put [Elate] in any harm. I made it tight, but there’s no rules that say you can’t make it tight. It’s a questionable move that I would have questioned myself if I got beat. But I didn’t, so I liked it.”
Bill Mott, trainer of the runner-up, said, “It was a tough call. I think they needed to look at it. [Smith] was race riding, and they let it stand. If they would have let it gone the other way, I could understand it.”
The official margin was a head, with Salty finishing another 3¼ lengths behind in third. The running time for 1 1/8 miles on a fast main track was 1:51.84, by far the slowest clocking since the race was shortened from 1¼ miles in 2010.
The Oaks winner, who races for China Horse Club International and . now boasts a 6-2-0 record from nine starts. The $180,000 winner’s share ups Abel Tasman’s total earnings to $1,467,060. Her Grade 1 victories also include the Starlet Stakes, which she won as a two-year-old at Los Alamitos.