For the second week in a row, Virginia highlights juvenile sprinters in their stakes card<\/TITLE><\/HEAD><BODY>Virginia turns the track over to the females once more this week for the Jennifer\u2019s Seas Challenge. This will be the second annual running of this eight furlong turf race, won last year by Stroppy, from the ponybaby stables. Fillies and mares of four years and up are invited to participate for a purse of $50000, and the track is rated as firm. Is an ecletic field here, welcoming back some familiar faces and some new ones, from stakes veterans, to those who are trying to break into the big time. It is shaping up to be quite a race, with all the contenders going off at 10\/1 or better odds, and five of the seven starters rated at 5\/1 or better. The favorite goes off at 2\/1 odds.<\/P>PP 1) Miss Gracie<\/B> Sired by Shaadi, trained by wins. Miss Gracie is a lightly raced six year old mare, making only her fifteenth career start here. This is her third try at stakes, and she is still seeking her first victory at this level. Her last ten starts have netted her a record of 1-1-2-3-1 record, with no 100+ speed runs. She comes off a fourth place finish in a short field stakes at this distance in Washington in her last outing. She started her career on dirt, but when she reached allowance level, she found that she had much better luck on turf, and has not gone back since. She has tried a variety of distances but she has had her best success at seven and at nine. This should be right up the middle of her distance preference. She is a fast starter and she does her best with a piece of the early lead. She has had trouble holding her leads, but the distance here seems to help rather than hinder her. She got some fast horses to contend with in this field, and she will need every bit of her best to be a factor here.<\/P>PP 2) Sotto Voce<\/B> Sired by Kingmambo, Trained by sgtbones. Sotto Voce is a four year old filly making her twenty second career start. She brings a rank of 32 in the older turf classic to the table here, with five stakes victories, including one at grade II level. Her last ten starts have seen her go 2-3-2-0-0 with four 100+ runs. Her last run was a Grade III outing in Ohio at nine furlongs, where she finished sixth with just far too much ground to make up down the back side. She has never raced on dirt, and with sixteen top three finishes in twenty one starts there has been no reason to mess with success. She has a 4-4-1 record in starts at this distance, and this includes several starts at graded stakes level. She is a pure deep closer, and her close has been off and on, but much of that is due to the level of competition she has been facing, as witnessed by the record she sports. She\u2019s in a field full of closers here, and she hasn\u2019t been at the top of her game recently. She will need a serious return to form to take this one. <\/P>PP 3) The War Department<\/B> Sired by War Chant, Trained by surlyn. The War Department is a four year old filly, making her seventeenth career start in this race. She makes her third stakes run here, and is seeking her first stakes victory. Her last ten starts have earned her a 3-1-3-2-0 record, and she has no 100+ speed runs. She comes here off a third place finish in an eleven furlong stakes effort on the tough Florida track. She had a rather lackluster start to her career while racing on dirt, but has since proved she prefers the green, having never finished worse than fourth in eleven turf tries. She drops way back in distance here, after making her last nine starts at eleven furlongs or better, back to her first run of last year. The distance in this one may be a bit short for her, without the leaisuely pace she is used to in longer races. She does her best running as a midpack to deep closer, and her close has been off an on at best. The shorter distance gives a better jump for the close, but also a hotter early pace to contend with here. She has been steadily improving and good be ready to throw a big one. If she had another furlong or two in this one, I\u2019d pick her as a longshot.<\/P>PP 4) Gove The Governor<\/B> Sired by Royal Academy, Trained by tizdubai. Gove The Governor makes her twenty seventh start here, continuing her five year old campaign. She is no stranger to stakes competition, but she still seeks her first victory at this level. She has posted a 1-3-2-2-0 record in her last ten starts, with no 100+ starts. She comes off an four length drubbing of a full field in a nine furlong A1t race right here in Virginia in her last start. She tried dirt once, but it only served to prove that turf was meant to be her home. She has excelled in the seven furlong range, but has shown the stamina to get out past nine furlongs without a problem. She is a deep closer, and her close has been quite consistent. She has shown the ability to make up large chunks of ground in the second half of a race. Distance should be about perfect here, and she should definitely be threatening in stretch. If she is less than eight out at the half, she could run away with this one.<\/P>PP 5) Smackdown(IRE)<\/B> Sired by Rock Of Gibraltar(IRE), Trained by peeps5. Smackdown(IRE) is another four year old filly gracing this field, and she makes her sixteenth start in this race. She has only stepped down from stakes level once in her fifteen starts, and she has four stakes wins, two of them Grade I victories. In her last ten starts she has galloped to a 1-2-1-0-1 record, with two 100+ speeds in that stretch. She comes off a disappointing thirteenth place finish in the DCD Lightning Ladies Sprint in her last start. Turf is her bread and butter surface. She made a try on dirt just to confirm it, and it did exactly that. She has made her last three starts in sprint, but this distance is where she has shone, going 3-2-2 in eight starts in this distance range. She excelled as a closer early in her career, but her close has been spotty over her last several, and she seems to be running better from just off the early pace. The step back up in distance, and back down to open stakes level is to her benefit here, and she is used to tough competition. It could be dangerous to write her off in this one. <\/P>PP 6) East Java<\/B> Sired by Broken Vow, Trained by devbarn. East Java is a four year old filly who gets the oddsmaker\u2019s nod in this one. She is making her sixteenth career start. She is still looking for her first stakes win. She is 3-1-2-0-3 in her last ten starts, breaking the 100+ speed mark twice. She comes off an open allowance victory on a tough New York track in her last outing. The race was at this distance, and she took it by one and a half at the wire. She started her career on dirt, but her career really took off when she hit the grass, and she has never looked back. Thirteen of fifteen starts have been in the eight to nine furlong range, and she is quite comfortable here against all types of competition. She likes racing just off the lead, and has shown no real inclination to close from further back in the back. Her sweet spot seems to be three or four lengths out at the half. She has recently ben doing some of the best running of her career, and definitely comes in as on of the hottest horses here. If she shows the speed she has been showing recently, she should be a threat here, and could very well have a piece of the early lead.<\/P>PP 7) Otto Elusive<\/B> Sired by Elusive Quality, Trained by verona. Otto Elusive makes her eighteenth start here, working her way into her four year old campaign. She is a stakes veteran, with three stakes win to her credit, including a Grade I triumph on the European turf circuit. She makes her first start since taking a beating in the DCD Penn Mile in which she may have been hurt, though her trainer in mute on the matter. Her dirt speeds were good starting out, but it has been turf that has put her on the map. She raced in some of the biggest turf races in Europe last year, and held her own pretty well. Two of her five wins and her career best speeds have all come in this distance range, and this is her kind of race. She has been experimenting with her running style, but her best showing have been running from midpack. She owns the highest speed figure in this field, and comes into this one off quite a long rest. If she returns to the form she showed last year, she could be a dangerous horse in the econd half of this one.<\/P><\/BODY><\/HTML><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Female turfers face the green mile<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":472,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-previews","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/472"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":1884,"date":"2006-03-16T21:20:11","date_gmt":"2006-03-16T21:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blacktypebugler.com\/?p=1884"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"oldbtb_3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/?p=1884","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer’s Seas Challenge draws seven"},"content":{"rendered":"