Small and Contentious Field in Vermont
A short field heads postward in Saturday’s $60,000 Bluegrass Chevy Memorial for three-year-old fillies at a mile and three sixteenths on the main track.
Bluegrass Chevy, of parramatta stables, is a stakes-winning daughter of Sadler’s Wells out of a Really Awesome mare. She started fifty times, winning five and finishing second or third an additional twelve for earnings of nearly $175,000. She spent four years on the track with barely a day of vacation. It took eleven starts to break her maiden (in a track-restricted allowance race) and her record may have looked better if she’d been other than what she was: a turf marathon mare. Races were limited and she often found herself running shorter distances than she might have preferred. Her stakes win came at four in the listed Queensland 1348 Special, where she came out on top of a headbob finish against a multiply graded-placed mare.
She’s produced two winners from three foals; her best is a stakes-placed five-year-old son of Loup Sauvage.
The slight favorite in the race that bears her name is sexinalimo‘s Northern Grey (Silver Ghost), the second foal and second winner of a Green Desert mare. She’s been racing in short fields recently and her preferred style is to let the others get away early and then hunt them down in the stretch. It’s served her well to date: she’s won four of nine starts and put over $125,000 in the bank. The Bluegrass Chevy will be her stakes debut and she gets the services of capable jockey C. Wolff.
But Peach Classic (Sky Classic) will keep her busy, and I’m not just sayin’ that because the two-time winner belongs to my boss, roys. The second winner of three out of a multiple stakes-winning mare, ‘Classic struggled a bit at two but was much the best in her sophomore debut and last time out, won a listed stakes at this distance, stalking the pace and bouncing home to notch a 96 speed rating. That’s the best that anyone in this field can boast, and W. McClendon–always a top rider on this circuit–is red-hot this year.
Young sire Peace Rules is represented on the Bluegrass Derby trail by fifth-ranked Peacenik and in the Bluegrass Chevy by Mystiko Rules, out of a Mystiko mare. She won at first asking as a two-year-old and though she sruggled over the dirt in her first start at there, has made amends in her last two, winning both allowance races handily. She did have some trouble here last year, but that was on the main track and under G. Blackmore. New rider K. Holmes is a better bet and while she’s untried at the distance, she’s been running like she’ll eat it up.
Rounding out the field at 7/2 is fugazi‘s Kick Out The Jams (Mighty), an eight-time starter with only a maiden win to her name. She is stakes-placed at the distance and in that race, she was a closer trying to make some headway into a very soft pace. Her numbers are a step slower than some of the others in here, but she’s sure to still be running at the end.