Tremble Before Me Scores 1st Graded Stakes Win

It was a nightmare for the morning line odds makers at Deauville here on Saturday, when all three winners of the graded stakes races on the card came through with big upset wins.

In the $150,000 Grade 3 Nordic Chemical at a mile on the turf for 4 year olds and up, Tremble Before Me threw a pretty major upset when he lit up the tote board at 11-1 after coming from 5 ¼ lengths off the pace to beat Tiz A song by ¾ of a length.

Dynawells (6-1) also scored a major upset win in the Grade 1 French Diana, just before Tremble Before Me’s first ever graded stakes win of his career, and Dubidubido (14-1) was Saturday’s biggest upset winner of all odds-wise in the three graded stakes races on the card when the 14-1 shot came from mid-pack to power to the win in the Grade 3 Moussac immediately after Tremble Before Me‘s win.

Although all three were upset winners, Tremble Before Me and Dubidubido came awfully close to setting stakes records in their races on the lightning fast Deauville turf course Saturday, while Dynawells actually did set a stakes record in winning the French Diana.

Tremble Before Me, the 5 year old son of Street Sense owned by the Otistaylor Stable Group, may have surprised the Deauville crowd who sent him off at odds of 11-1, but his performance didn’t surprise his owner.

After the race, as Tremble Before Me was trotting back to the winner’s circle, his owner said, “I really did think those fast speeds (115 and 107, the previous two fastest speed figures of his career) he was running a few races back were not flukes. His last race was bad planning on my part. It was just too short.”

Tremble Before Me, who threw a 114 speed figure in Saturday’s race with a winning time of 1:33 3/5, finished twelfth last time out in 7 furlong Grade 2 French Toast Sprint right here on this same Deauville turf course on April 30.

With Hardwater Wells pressing early leader and heavily favored Perez Prado on the front end in the Nordic Chemical Stakes, Tremble Before Me was content to lay back in fifth place in the second path on the backstretch just off the flank of Sirimiri.

Just before the early leaders hit the far turn, Tremble Before Me started to make his move, passing first Sirimiri and then Dawson’s Song. He finally collared Hardwater Wells about 100 meters before the finish and held off a late surge from Tiz A Song, who rallied from tenth place to grab the second spot on Saturday.

“I am really happy to get this one a graded win,” said the owner of Tremble Before Me. “It’s always satisfying when one you had some conviction about comes through. My guess is we’ll take a breather and look to come back at this level (next time out), or maybe slightly higher if a race comes up soft.”

Tremble Before Me, who is out of the Galileo mare Duchess of Tuscany, was just 1/5 of a second off the Nordic Chemical Stakes record set last year by Npark’s Pride. Tremble Before Me ran the mile in 1:33 3/5.

Tremble Before Me paid $25.10 to his backers for the win, and the 8-3 exacta with Tiz A Song paid $218.70. The 8-3-1 trifecta of those two and third place finisher Hardwater Wells was even more impressive, paying a whopping $2,601.30.