Finley’sluckycharm looks ahead to G1 Ballerina
NYRA SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Trainer Bret Calhoun said Finley’sluckycharm came out of her 2 ¼-length win over Vertical Oak in the Grade 2, $200,000 Honorable Miss on Wednesday in good order and remains on target for the Grade 1, $500,000 Ketel One Ballerina on Travers Day, August 25.
“We’re very happy with how she bounced out of the race,” Calhoun said Thursday morning. “It was the kind of race we wanted. There was a nice trip for her. I think it will allow her to point for the Ballerina.”
Finley’sluckycharm tracked the speed in the sixfurlong sprint on Saratoga Race Course’s main track before overtaking Vertical Oak from the outside in the stretch. After finishing a neck behind Paulassilverlining in last year’s edition of the Honorable Miss, the 5-year-old Twirling Candy mare bested a five-horse field for her second graded stakes win in three starts.
“Paulassilverlining is a great filly and it looked like we had her put away in deep stretch but she came back and got us on the wire, so we had victory ripped out of our hands, so to come back this year and win it was great,” Calhoun said.
The Ballerina is a Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” qualifier to the Grade 1, $1 million Filly & Mare Sprint on November 3 at Churchill Downs, offering Finley’sluckycharm a chance to atone for last year’s ninth-place performance in that race at Del Mar. The seven-furlong Ballerina is the same distance as the Grade 1 Madison on April 7 at Keeneland in which Finley’sluckycharm outkicked Miss Sunset by a neck.
“You look at her record, [and] the Madison is a convincing race,” Calhoun said. “There were eight graded stakes winners in there. She ran basically gate-to-wire with wideopen, suicide-type fractions and held them off. That was a race of champions there. That race in turn ended up costing us in the next race [fourth in the Grade 1] in the Humana Distaff [on May 5]. You saw the spacing between those races and this one two months forward. She was a fresh horse and put weight back on. She looked magnificent. Everything went right.”
Calhoun said keeping her at Saratoga can be beneficial since she’s run well at the historic course.