The second half of this week\u2019s doubleheader in Virginia is the Sugar and Spice Stakes. A select group of owners have been asked to send their best three year old and older bargain bred females to run over six furlongs of fast dirt to capture a piece of the generous $75000 purse. Six trainers took up the gauntlet giving us a fairly well matched field of fillies and mares. Oddsmakers have designated a 7\/5 favorite, but three of the other five entries are weighing in at 4\/1 odds or less. This should make an excellent way to end a full day of racing in Virginia this week.<\/P>
PP 1) Chance For Delta<\/B> Sired by American Chance, Trained by imatiger2. Chance for Delta is a four year old filly making her twenty seventh career start in this race. She has four prior stakes victories on her resume, her last coming late last year. In nine starts this year, she has posted a 1-2-1-0-1 record with a best speed of 98.0, earned two starts back. Her last run was a six furlong dirt stakes in Upper New York, where she finished a fairly close eighth in a very tight field of ten runners. The bulk of her career starts have been on dirt, and her disappointing performance on turf just show she belongs her. She is a born sprinter, and this is her bread and butter distance, finishing in the top three in nine of twelve starts in this range. She is a midpack to deep closer and her close has been consistent this year, but it hasn\u2019t been getting her as close as it should recently. It looks like she is getting her close started a bit late. She will need her close to kick in stronger and probably earlier to be able to bring this one home.<\/P>
PP 2) Chimin D\u2019or<\/B> Sired by Chimineas, Trained by bigiron. Chimin D\u2019or is a three year old filly who runs for the twentieth time. This will be her first ever stakes start. She has logged nine starts this season, running to a 2-0-2-1-1 record, with a top speed number of 87.2 earned in the first half of the season. Her last run was an eight and a half furlong starter allowance, where she finished third in a field of seven. She has made two starts on turf, and her speeds weren\u2019t bad, but she has perfomed much better on the dirt surface. She has made her mark as a router rather than a sprinter, and she has had the majority of her success at eight furlongs and beyond. She is a stalker type runner, preferring to run just off the pace. So far this year, her close has been less than stellar. She\u2019s also been having trouble holding the early pace, and the shorter distance could help, but I wouldn\u2019t count on it. She\u2019s going to have to find a lot more speed than she\u2019s shown so far this season to be a factor in this one.<\/P>
PP 3) Hot Christi<\/B> Sired by Finder\u2019s Gold, Trained by foolofdirt. Hot Christi makes her fourteenth career start here in her three year old season. This is her fourth stakes start, and she is still looking for her first victory at this level. She has made eleven runs this season, sporting a 2-5-2-0-0 record with a best speed of 95.9 earned early this season. Her last run was a six furlong dirt stakes in Upper New York, where she finished third by a quarter length in a three way heat at the wire. She has made the majority of her starts on dirt, and though her one turf start wasn\u2019t a bad outing, she seems to get a lot more traction on the dirt. The majority of her runs have been routes, but she has shown some talent for sprinting, especially at shorter distance. She is a deep closer, and her close has been on again off again. When she is on though, she can be very good, with her last race as an example. She made up ten lengths in the last three furlongs to nearly steal it at the wire. If she could duplicate her last, she could be a real threat down the stretch here. <\/P>
PP 4) Sea Orchid<\/B> Sired by Orchid\u2019s Devil, Trained by txbred. Sea Orchid is a four year old filly making her twenty eighth career start in this race. This is her second straight stakes, and she is still looking for her first win. She has ten starts this year, about half in the claim\/starter ranks, and has run to a 2-0-2-0-1 record, with a best speed of 98.1 earned in a starter allowance early this year. Her last outing was a six furlong stakes for bargain breds in Upper New York, where she finished sixth while closing down the stretch. She has tried turf only once, taking a serious hit to her speed, then returning to dirt where she is most comfortable. This is her most travelled distance, and she has had good success in this range. Her best speeds however have been about a furlong longer. She is a stalker to midpack closer, but her close has been fair at best this year. Her speeds hold up pretty well in this field, but she may need a faster jump to have success here.<\/P>
PP 5) Knickers Off<\/B> Sired by Scan, Trained by chongtong. Knickers Off is a five year old mare who will make a field high thirty sixth start this year. She has two stakes wins on her resume, both gained this year. She has made eight starts to date this year, earning a record of 2-1-1-2-0 record with a top speed of 103.7 earned three starts back. Her last run was the same Bargain Dash Stakes in Upper New York that many of these contenders participated in, where she grabbed a second place finish by just a nose, closing hard down to the wire. She tried turf, and her speeds were good, but she has had her best success on dirt, and it is mostly on dirt she stays. She is a pure sprinter, and five of nine wins have come in this distance range. She is a mid pack closer, and her close has been fairly good, especially in this distance range. She has been running well, posting some nice speeds this year, and that earns her the oddsmakers\u2019 nod here.<\/P>
PP 6) Standing Around<\/B> Sired by Flight Forty Nine, Trained by smartjones. Standing Around is a four year old filly, stepping onto the track for her twenty fourth race here. She has three stakes wins to her credit, one of them coming this year. In her eight starts this year, she has a 2-0-0-2-0 record, with a best speed of 102.4, earned in her first start of the season. Her last start was a five and a half furlong open allowance in Puerto Rico where she smoked a field of eight by nearly three lengths. She never been off the dirt, and with twelve victories in twenty three starts, there hardly seems to be any reason to move her. She has fifteen starts in this distance range, earning nine wins. She is a fast starter, loving to get a piece of the early lead. In a race this short if she gets out in front early she can be hard to catch. She should have the early lead pretty much to herself in this one, and that will be a plus for her. Her speeds have been on a downturn for her past few starts, and she\u2019ll need to bring her best to hold off the closers in this one.<\/P><\/BODY><\/HTML><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inexpensive breeding doesn’t mean slow<\/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-3044","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\/3044","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=3044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}