Maple Leaf Mel a classy winner of the Miss Preakness (G3) May 19 at Pimlico (Barbara Singer/Past The Wire)
NYRA Press Office
ELMONT, N.Y.— Melanie Giddings, the namesake of undefeated graded stakes winner Maple Leaf Mel, has taken over training duties of the likely favorite for next Saturday’s Grade 3, $175,000 Victory Ride for sophomore fillies going 6 1/2 furlongs at Belmont Park.
Maple Leaf Mel has not raced since an effortless victory in the Grade 3 Miss Preakness on May 19 at Pimlico Race Course which was her first graded effort as well as her first start outside of her native state of New York.
The sophomore bay daughter of Cross Traffic previously defeated her Empire State-bred counterparts in the Seeking the Ante in August at Saratoga Race Course and the East View on March 24 at Aqueduct.
Maple Leaf Mel is owned by retired Super Bowl-winning head coach Bill Parcells’ August Dawn Farm and was previously trained by Jeremiah Englehart.
Giddings previously worked for Hall of Famers Mark Casse and Steve Asmussen as well as Al Stall, Jr. before spending roughly six years as Englehart’s assistant. She commenced her training career in January and has now won two races, both on June 21 at Presque Isle Downs with Fight and Ready She Is.
“To me, it would be weird to not have Maple Leaf Mel in my barn. After having looked after her for so long, it would be more strange to not see her rather than to see her every day,” Giddings said. “Usually, when people name horses after people, it doesn’t turn out the way it’s turned out with her. I just hope we can continue to have success with her through the summer.”
Giddings, a native of Cobourg, Ontario, was based in South Florida when going out on her own, but moved her operation to Saratoga for the summer once business started picking up.
“I started this winter with just a couple horses. I didn’t really plan on doing a whole lot, I just wanted a couple of my own,” Giddings said. “Then it turned out, I was getting a couple more, and a couple more and then I thought that I wanted to come up here. It’s a little bit nicer up here than South Florida for the summer.”
Giddings spoke high volumes of Parcells.
“He’s a good, genuine person and he’s always wanting to help people. It’s just his nature,” Giddings said. “I don’t think anyone ever envisions naming a horse after somebody and it’s turning out to really be something. We want every horse to be something, but this just happened to be the one.”
Giddings described Maple Leaf Mel as, “different and quirky in her own little way.”
“She’s a nice filly to train, a high-spirited horse. She doesn’t go anywhere without the pony,” Giddings said. “She’s also highly intelligent. I feel like she’s matured a lot turning three. I just hope that she can progressively get better from there.”
Giddings said Maple Leaf Mel breezed a half-mile in 49.40 seconds with Shaun Bridgmohan up on Friday at Saratoga.
“She’s just a good feeling horse. She was dragging Shaun to the wire in a nice work. She was bucking on the way back home and that’s just her,” Giddings said.
Despite already having her own barn, Giddings was still on hand for Maple Leaf Mel’s Miss Preakness conquest and expressed pride in the winning effort.
“I was super proud of her. She had to run against a different group of horses for the first time that day,” Giddings recalled. “She had to ship from Florida to Pimlico. We shipped to New York to run and shipped her right back to Florida to train for her last race. There was a whole lot of excitement that day with walking up to the paddock with all the people cheering and clapping in the stands. It was a high-intensity atmosphere and she handled herself well.”
Having worked for a handful of different trainers has given Giddings her own approach in terms of conditioning horses.
“I feel like I just try to learn things all the time from anyone that’s around me,” Giddings said. “I’ve worked for some very good people that are very successful. I try to take little things here and there that have worked for them and maybe they are the kind of things that can work for me.”
Bred by Joe Fafone, Maple Leaf Mel is out of the dual-winning City Place mare City Gift, who also produced the stakes-placed Eddie’s Gift.
