Always Shopping heads roster of 31 nominees for closing day Bewitch Stakes
LEXINGTON, Ky.—Trainer and part-owner Brian Lynch reported via text from Churchill Downs that Tobys Heart was looking great Saturday morning following her half-length victory in the $100,000 TVG Limestone Turf Sprint Friday afternoon at Keeneland.
Now a winner of three of four career starts, Tobys Heart could surface next in New York.
“I have to put some thought into her next race, but the ($100,000) Soaring Softly (G3) at Belmont comes to mind,” Lynch said of the 7-furlong grass test on May 15.
Friday’s victory marked the second stakes score for Tobys Heart, who closed her brief 2020 campaign with a triumph in the Bolton Landing (L) at Saratoga.
TVG Limestone Turf Sprint Replay
Always Shopping heads roster of 31 nominees for closing day Bewitch Stakes
Repole Stable’s homebred Always Shopping, who has found her niche as a grass marathoner, heads of list of 31 fillies and mares nominated to the 59th running of the $150,000 Bewitch (G3) going 1½ miles on the turf on Friday, April 23. The Bewitch is the closing-day feature of Keeneland’s Spring Meet.
Trained by Todd Pletcher, Always Shopping has won three of her past five grass starts. Her lone setbacks came by a head in the 1½-mile Rood & Riddle Dowager (G3) here last fall and by a nose to War Like Goddess, another Bewitch nominee, in last month’s Orchid (G3) at Gulfstream Park going 1 3/8 miles.
Entries for the Bewitch will be taken Sunday, April 18.
GALLOPING OUT
Keeneland Racing Analyst Tom Leach interviewed trainer Kenny McPeek about King Fury in today’s Stonestreet Lexington (G3).
Keeneland Barn Notes
Photo: Tobys Heart, (Coady Photography)
