Oaks winner takes Oaklawn thriller
It was a performance worthy of a Kentucky Oaks winner.
Shouldn’t such a horse do just that, win, at Oaklawn?
As did 2019 Oaks winner Serengeti Empress in the same race last year, Shedaresthedevil played another big room Saturday, this one in her co-owner’s backyard. And with Staton Flurry, nervous as an expectant father, leading the letting-go.
Shedaresthedevil made an heroic return to Hot Springs and beat older horses for the first time in the Grade 2 $350,000 Azeri.
Scoring her fourth graded victory in her 4-year-old debut, Shedaresthedevil displayed the speed throughout that made her an upset winner of last year’s Kentucky Oaks. With two Grade 3 triumphs and the Grade 1 Oaks, she was a finalist in Eclipse Award voting for 3-year-old, which went to Preakness winner Swiss Skydiver, also sired by Daredevil and awaiting her seasonal debut Saturday in California.
Finding herself on the lead under Florent Geroux, Shedaresthedevil held off 12-time winner Letruska by a head after a stirring mile and sixteenth in 1:42.57. Getridofailesu, last-out heroine of Oaklawn’s Pippin, entered here by trainer Brad Cox in case of a pace meltdown or the favorite (which
he trains) somehow wasn’t at tops, placed third.
Envoutante, also in her first start at 4, squandered any advantage she may have had in her first Oaklawn race: among them, the rail post and more recent racing
(53 days) than Shedaresthedevil. Always playing catch-up, the Ken McPeek trainee, stablemate of Swiss Skydiver, finished fourth, ahead only of Motion Emotion.
A popular choice of the crowd — many fans familiar with Flurry, who with his mother runs a parking lot on the Central Avenue side of Oaklawn – Shedaresthedevil (6 for 12 lifetime) paid $5.60, $3 and
$2.20, carrying 119 pounds in her first start since the Oct. 4 Grade 1 Spinster at Keeneland.
“She really dug in there at the finish,” Flurry said, recalling his filly’s response as Letruska (the bettors’ choice, at 2-1) and Joel Rosario challenged from outside. “She had me kind of worried there.”
Looking ahead to a year of fresh challenges, Flurry added,
“It’s good to have her back.”
Even if a fairer lady exists in her own stable.
Like one of those records trapped at No. 2 on the charts behind “You Light Up My Life” and “Physical,” Shedaresthedevil still looks up to two-time champion Monomoy Girl. Last-out winner of Oaklawn’s Grade 3 Bayakoa, the 6-year-old Tapizar racemare has yet to meet the Oaks winner, a matchup Cox would just as soon avoid for a while longer.
With Monomoy Girl possibly coming back for the Grade 1 Apple Blossom Handicap April 17, Cox may point Shedaresthedevil to the Grade 1 La Troienne at Churchill Downs. Think a return by the Oaks winner under the twin spires on Derby week wouldn’t go over big? With well-wishers in Louisville, his hometown, cheering on Cox.
All agreed after the Azeri that the winner got a break when Letruska got away poorly over a track she won last year. Shedaresthedevil, the Grade 3 Honeybee winner and Fantasy show horse in her biggest local races, set early fractions of 23.57 and 47.67 seconds.
“We caught a flyer out of the gate,” Geroux said. “I was expecting Letruska to lead all the way. I don’t know if she didn’t break fast enough or stumbled, but we inherited the lead and I just took it from there.
“She maybe got a little bit tired down the lane, but it was good for her first race off the break,” the jockey said. “I don’t think she was 100 percent cranked up for this. We have hopes for a big year with her.
Big Aut Farms and original owner Qatar Racing Limited also have interest in Shedaresthedevil, trained in California by Simon Callaghan as a 2-year-old and purchased in November 2019.
“Whenever I run here, I’m nervous,” Flurry said. “I expected the three (Letruska) to break good, but she didn’t. We just went on with it. Florent rode a great race. It’s going to be a fun year.”