May Day Ready. (Adam Coglianese/NYRA)
NYRA Press Office
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – KatieRich Stables’ May Day Ready made every pole a winning one under Jose Ortiz in Saturday’s Grade 2, $400,000 Lake Placid, a one-mile inner turf test for sophomore fillies, at Saratoga Race Course.
Trained by Joe Lee, the Tapit bay kicked off the stakes action on a lucrative 14-race Grade 1 DraftKings Travers Day program with a powerful win executed in stark contrast to her rallying nose effort to make the grade in the Grade 2 Jessamine in October at Keeneland that capped a trio of victorious closing efforts.
Lee said he wasn’t surprised to see May Day Ready up front.
“I left it up to Jose, I told him, ‘You decide what you want to do,’” Lee said. “But I knew she’d be fresh. I knew if she got a clean break, with the horses that were in there, should someone not decide to go, she may just be on the lead.”
Eponine, with Irad Ortiz, Jr. up, broke to the front along with 3-2 mutuel favorite Play With Fire before a keen May Day Ready, exiting post 3 at odds of 9-5, took over to mark the opening quarter-mile in 24.51 seconds over the firm footing.
May Day Ready showed the way down the backstretch with Eponine tracking from second along the hedge and Scarlet Sands in third to the outside of Play With Fire with Reining Flowers and Warming at the back of the compact field.
The Flavien Prat-piloted Play With Fire advanced along the inside approaching the final turn but lacked room behind Eponine and was shuffled back through the turn as Scarlet Sands launched her clear run on the outside after a half-mile in 49.16 with May Day Ready still a comfortable leader.
“I should have done it differently,” said a frustrated Prat.
May Day Ready reached three-quarters in 1:13.39 and kicked for home as Play With Fire cut the corner, pinned her ears and took aim at the runaway leader while surging to the inside of Eponine. But the well-prepared May Day Ready had plenty in the tank to post the half-length score in a final time of 1:35.70. Play With Fire completed the exacta by two lengths over Eponine with Reining Flowers, Warming and Scarlet Sands rounding out the order of finish.
“I asked her a little bit past the three-eighths pole, and she responded beautiful,” Ortiz said. “I knew they were gonna have to come home in five to get her because I have so much horse the last eighth of a mile. I was gonna come home in six at least. Five and change, that’s very hard to do that. The other horse [Play With Fire made up] ground but wasn’t lucky. There was no pace. The one horse ran a very game race. In 1:13, it’s very hard to catch up.”
Lee said the comfortable splits worked out in his filly’s favor.
“You always hope it [the pace] works out that way,” Lee said. “You always hope they run home. I was glad to see 24 and change, 49 and change, obviously hoping she’d run home. To be honest with you, she is a horse that likes competition. When she has a horse next to her, she’ll dig in a little bit more than when she’s by herself. Jose sprinted away there [at the end].”
May Day Ready won her first three starts, taking her debut by a nose here last August at odds of 25-1 ahead of a 1 3/4-length score in the Listed Juvenile Fillies at Kentucky Downs. She followed up her Jessamine score with a closing 1 1/2-length second in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Del Mar before heading to Japan where she was off-the-board in the Group 1 Hanshin Juvenile Fillies in December at Kyoto.
May Day Ready made her seasonal debut when last-of-3 in an off-the-turf edition of the Grade 3 Wonder Again in June during the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival at Saratoga before a troubled fourth last out in the nine-furlong Grade 1 Belmont Oaks Invitational on July 5 here.
Lee indicated May Day Ready could now point to the Grade 3, $175,000 Winter Memories on September 20 at Belmont at the Big A with other potential options at Keeneland in the nine-furlong Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup on October 11 and the one-mile Grade 2 Valley View on October 24.
“There’s a race at Aqueduct going one mile,” started Lee. “If the owners don’t decide to go in the QEII, there’s a mile third week at Keeneland [G2 Valley View] that might be a possibility.”
Bred in Kentucky by White Birch Farm, May Day Ready banked $220,000 in victory while improving her record to 8-4-1-1. She returned $5.70 for a $2 win bet. She is out of the multiple Grade/Group 1-placed More Than Ready mare Nemoralia, who was third in the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf.
Live racing resumes Sunday at Saratoga with a 10-race card featuring the $150,000 West Point presented by Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Race 8. First post is 1:10 p.m. Eastern.
