Margarita Girl rolls by in the Las Flores, Benoit Photo
Santa Anita Press
ARCADIA, CA — Margarita Girl provided trainer Mark Glatt and co-owner Saints or Sinners with a second graded stakes win in as many days Sunday when scoring in the Grade III, $100,000 Las Flores Stakes for older fillies and mares going six furlongs at Santa Anita. On Saturday, Glatt and Saints or Sinners won the GII San Vicente Stakes for 3-year-olds.
Ridden by Ricky Gonzalez for the first time, Margarita Girl (4-1) showed a new dimension when settling off the early pace in what was her stakes debut. Thermal, the 9-5 second choice, showed the way under Hector Berrios through opening fractions of 21.74 and 44.11 seconds. Thermal was then soon overtaken by 14-1 longshot No Bad Beats when turning into the stretch.
Meanwhile, Margarita Girl—who hadn’t started since August when beating maidens at Del Mar—had been angled to the outside by Gonzalez where she launched her rally. Margarita Girl blew past No Bad Beats near the sixteenth pole and won going away by 1 ¾ lengths. The winning time was 1:09.19.
“I had a lot of horse,” said Gonzalez, who got the mount in place of an injured Antonio Fresu. “It set up perfect for her. She sat right behind them, I got her off the rail to the outside and when it was time to go, she kicked in for me.”
No Bad Beats held second by 1 ¼ lengths over Ooty (9-1) with Thermal completing the superfecta.
A 4-year-old filly by Twirling Candy, Margarita Girl joined Glatt’s barn as a juvenile with high expectations. At auction that year, she was bought by Saints or Sinners for the hefty price of $575,000. She debuted in August 2024 and finished second. It would take five additional starts before finally graduating.
“We thought she was going to win first time out, that’s how well she was training going into her debut,” Glatt said. “She was pretty speedy in her early races and was falling apart a little bit. Finally, we got her to start to relax a little bit. Today you saw she came, not well off the pace, but a couple two or three lengths off the pace. It made her a better horse.
“She’s all class. She’s a good horse,” Glatt later added.
Margarita Girl paid $10.40, $4.60 and $3.40. No Bad Beats, with Emisael Jaramillo up for trainer Doug O’Neill, returned $10.60 and $5.60. Ooty, ridden by Juan Hernandez for trainer Bob Baffert, paid $6.00.
