Zeco De Lago(AUS)<\/B> took advantage of a rather unexpected early speed duel to post a two length victory in this week\u2019s North The Baby Bonanza. He post a 72.4 speed figure, somewhat of a slow pace, but that was more than enough for the colt to grab his first career stakes victory. He keeps his perfect turf record intact, now with three wins in three tries on the grass. The victory give him wins in three of his four starts, and takes his career earnings to the $56160 mark. The stakes win, coupled with his allowance win last time out moves him in to the top 100 among juvenile turf sprinters, pushing him to a 73 ranking. With the race favorite finishing out of the trifecta, and the longshot taking second place honors, payouts, while not overwhelming, were better than expected. The winner paid $5.50 $2.70 $2.10 across the board. The surprising finish led to a $23.00 exacta payout, and a $62.50 payout in the trifecta.<\/P>
The break was a lot more tightly contested than predicted, with two colts stepping up above their normal pace coming from the gate. Instead of the clear cut early lead he expected, race favorite Picoturquino(IRE)<\/B> found himself in an early speed duel with the two other colts. And even more surprisingly, he found himself on the wrong end of it. As they hit the first call in this one, the three horses were all bunched within a half length, with upstart Heavy G(KY)<\/B> a quarter length out in front. Zeco De Lago(AUS) was sitting a length and a half off the pace, licking his chops as he watched all three of his competitors fighting for some kind of lead. As they reached the half, Loch Doon(IRE)<\/B> was already starting to fade, and Heavy G(KY) had three quarters of a length on Picoturquino(IRE), who was also starting to struggle as they reached the half. Crossing the halfway mark, Zeco De Lago(AUS) turned up the heat, eating up the two and a quarter lengths he was down at the half, then breezing by the leader as they moved into the stretch. The stretch was all Zeco De Lago(AUS), leaving no doubts as he crossed the wire two lengths ahead of Heavy G(KY) for the win. Loch Doon(IRE) was able to hold on for third place, four and a half out at the wire.<\/P><\/BODY><\/HTML><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strong second half propels colt to victory<\/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":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6607","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=6607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}