Ce Ce sticks neck out late for Grade 1 victory
Two West Coast visitors crossed the finish line almost as one on Saturday at Oaklawn Park. One could almost hear the Beach Boys in the background singing: “Wish they all could be California girls.”
Breaking closer to the grandstand than to the rail, Ce Ce found the Larry Snyder Winner’s Circle from post 14, scoring a second-straight Grade 1 victory. The 4-year-old daughter of Elusive Quality (sire of Smarty Jones) got up by a neck over 5-year-old Ollie’s Candy (by Candy Ride) in the $600,000 Apple Blossom Handicap.
Placing judges studied the finish-line photo diligently before posting what for Oaklawn is a rare 14-1 exacta, Ce Ce and Victor Espinoza prevailing in the last jump against Ollie’s Candy and Joel Rosario.
“I’m OK with it now,” winning trainer Mike McCarthy said. “Had the photo been the other way, I probably wouldn’t have been OK with it.”
Whatever he felt inside, trainer John Sadler said “I’m thrilled” after Ollie’s Candy just missed. “I thought she ran great. The instructions to Joel were to just not waste the (rail) post,” he said.
The top two renewed a rivalry in which Ce Ce won and Ollie’s Candy placed third in Santa Anita’s Grade 1 Beholder Mile March 14. With most major tracks closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 56th Apple Blossom drew a field worthy of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
Serengeti Empress, last year’s Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks winner, went off the 2-1 favorite after scoring by 6 1/4 lengths in Oaklawn’s Grade 2 Azeri March
14 at the Apple Blossom’s mile-and-sixteenth distance.
The race complexion “totally changed,” McCarthy said, when Serengeti Empress, a need-the-lead type, was stymied early from post 11. She finished 10th after closing to second after three quarters in 1:10.27.
Expecting to take the overland route, McCarthy said, “The horses I thought we had to beat were all directly inside of us, and I thought our best-laid plans would have been (that) Serengeti Empress would go ahead and be the controlling speed. Things didn’t work out that way, obviously.”
A confident Espinoza said “the idea was to break sharp” on Ce Ce. “I had to use my brains a little to not go into the first turn too wide. … I knew if she was good enough, she’d win the race, so I encouraged her out of the gate and put her in a good position … three or four wide (on the first turn), and it was perfect. I was smiling because it was exactly what I wanted.
“Down the backside I had to put her in the race because I didn’t want the speed to get away from me,” said Espinoza. “At the three-eighths (pole), I put her behind the speed, and she just waited. Turning for home I was just loaded.”
Ground Espinoza saved early helped Ce Ce overcome a 2
1/2-length deficit at the head of the stretch, Ollie’s Candy going the first mile in faster time
(1:36.55) than Ce Ce won the Beholder pressing the pace.
“It was little hard for me to see through the shadows and stuff. I couldn’t tell if she was actually gaining on horses or what,” McCarthy said. “They were rolling up front. We were in a great spot.”
Ce Ce paid $9.80, $5.80 and $4.60, keying a $1 exacta worth $35.90, after a fast-rated trip in 1:43.14. Early-season Oaklawn stakes winner Go Google Yourself (Grade 3 Bayakoa) placed seventh, just ahead of 2019 Oaklawn Grade 3 Fantasy winner Lady Apple. Grade 1-winning sprinter Come Dancing finished 12th in the 6-year-old’s first start in Hall of Fame trainer Wayne Lukas’ stable. Cookie Dough, a last-out Grade 3 winner expected to pressure the pace, broke in front but backed out early on the backstretch and finished last.
Up front, two “little old ladies from Pasadena” turned the Oaklawn stretch into the Arkansas equivalent of Colorado Boulevard. Both had figurative California license plates, and it took a photo to determine which got home first.