Race fans get a look at the two year old fillies this week, as Viriginia hosts the fourth annual running of the Gone At Last Bonanza. The race is set to run over seven and a half furlongs of firm turf, and carries a $50000 purse. Historically the race has drawn short fields, and is another of those Virginia stakes that carries a favorite\u2019s jinx, with the favorite never posting a win in the first three runnings. It has also typically been a closer\u2019s race, won by a strong stretch run. Not one of the winners has ever held a lead crossing into the stretch, but amazingly, the shortest margin of victory has been a length and a half. Last year\u2019s winner King\u2019s Hill(IRE)<\/B> stormed up from seven and a half lengths off the pace at the half, and made up five of them down the stretch to post a length and a half victory. This year\u2019s running is no exception to the short field rules, with only three fillies accepting the challenge, and a filler being provided by the Virginia Horse Pool. This won\u2019t be a bettor\u2019s race, with an even odds favorite backed by a pair at 9\/5 and 5\/2 odds. The horse pool entry claims the longshot bid at 7\/1 on the morning line. All but one of the entries has experienced the distance, and two of the four have prior stakes experience.<\/P>
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PP 1) Mushy Kirby(IRE)<\/B> Sired by Peintre Celebre(IRE), Trained by kirby08. Mushy Kirby(IRE) faces her seventh career start in this race. Two prior stakes starts have produced third and fourth place finishes, and she is still looking for her first victory at this level. She\u2019s put together a 2-0-2-1-0 record in her first six, with a top speed of 81.9 coming in her last run. That race was an eight furlong stakes in Ottawa, where she pretty much held postion thoughout, finishing third in a field of six. After a rough maiden debut on dirt, she switch to turf, where she has put up four top three finishes in five starts. She stretched to a mile in her last two starts, producing a win and a place, so the distance shouldn\u2019t be a problem. She is a deep closer, and he close has been up and down. Outside of stakes she has been quite good, but has had trouble mounting her close in stakes competition, although she has also faced stronger fields than she faces here in both of those tries. Her last speed was her career best by a full ten points, but that relates more to the speed that finished in front of her than it does to her. To win this one, she will need to prove she can post those types of numbers on the front end, as well. Her biggest advantage here is her distance experience, and you should see a strong second half run from her in this one.<\/P>
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PP 2) Sparkling Notion(ENG)<\/B> Sired by Sakhee, Trained by Virginia Horse Pool. Sparkling Notion(ENG) makes career start number six in this race, and her first as a member of the horse pool. She is winless in her first five, and steps up to stakes for the first time here. She has put up a best speed figure of 65.1, which came in her last start, a six and a half furlong MSW in Rhode Island, where she finished fifth in a field of nine. Surface and distance both make her a wild card here. Her single turf run came on a yielding track, and she has a single outing at a mile which also came on an off track. Like most Sakhee offspring, she has shown no fondness for an off track, and Sakhee progeny have also shown an overwhelming turf preference, ideally with some distance to it. She runs with a closer\u2019s break, but has yet to show any real kind of close in her first five starts. It will be interesting to see how she responds to her first try on firm turf. She\u2019ll need to garner a lot more speed and some kind of close to really be a factor here, but she may not be a total write off under these conditions.<\/P>
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PP 3) Sold Out(FR)<\/B> Sired by Ocean of Wisdom, Trained by claybornfa. Sold Out(FR) <\/B>steps to the track for start number four in this race. Two of those three starts have been against stakes competition, and she owns the only stakes win in this field. She\u2019s set a 2-0-1-0-0 mark in her first three, capping her speeds with a 71.9 mark in her last start. That race was a stakes race at this distance on a tough Eastern Kentucky track, where she gave up a lead down the stretch to finish third in a field of four. All three career starts have been on turf, and with her never finishing outside the top three, there is really no reason to mess with success thus far. She has runs at seven and seven and a half furlongs, and they have been her best starts speed wise. She prefers a fast break from the gate, and she has led the field into the stretch in all three of her prior starts, two of which she won. She has had some problems staving off the closers in her longer races, and this field has a setup that closely resembles the field she faced in her last start. She shouldn\u2019t have much early pressure here, and that should allow her to open up a fairly good lead on the field early. She\u2019s going to need every inch of it to hold off the closers here though, as the yhead to the wire.<\/P>
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PP 4) Moon Rover(JPN)<\/B> Sired by Admire Moon, Trained by okdavid196. Moon Rover enters her fifth career start, and has been tagged by the oddsmakers as the filly to beat in this one. This will be her first try against stakes competition. In her first for she holds a record of 1-2-0-0-0, with a best speed figure of 79.9 coming out of her last start. That run was a six and a half furlong A2L in Delaware, where she closed to a half length at the top of the stretch, before falling to one of the deeper closers in the field of thirteen and settling for a second place finish. All four career starts have been on the turf, and she has shown a good comfort level on the surface. This will be her longest run to date by a half furlong. Her previous long was seven furlongs, and while posting a decent speed, she had trouble coming back from a deeper hole at the half than she is used to finding herself. She likes to break in the midpack, and outside of her first start, her close has been quite consistent. She looks like rather a tossup here, with the pros and cons weighing about equally on the scales. On one hand, she has been steadily improving in every start and shows no sign of wanting to backslide here. On the other hand, her only career victory came when she was sitting just off the lead going past the half, and she has had some problems coming from deeper. Deeper is where she is likely to find herself at the half here, and she\u2019s going to need a stronger second half to break the favorite\u2019s jinx here.<\/P><\/BODY><\/HTML><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Long sprint should test the mettle of these four<\/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-6710","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\/6710","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=6710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}