Last Race for Hip 189

- Well, Society Selection finally did beat Ashado for the first time since she took last year’s Alabama. Unfortunately they were both 9 ¼ lengths behind Pleasant Home. However, perhaps she took some satisfaction from knowing that by edging her for place, she prevented Ashado from overtaking Azeri as the all-time money-winning filly or mare in North America. Ashado, who also was making the final start of her career, needed to finish first or second to bypass Azeri. [MSNBC.com] Ashado will now exchange her number 3 saddlecloth that she wore in her last race for #189, the hip number (pdf) she has been assigned for the Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, where she will be auctioned off on November 5. This particular piece of breeding stock finished her career with 21 wins [oops, 12 wins in 21 starts, sorry], four seconds and four thirds for her career. In 2005, she won just three out of seven starts, along with a second, third, fourth, and fifth.

Pleasant Home looked a bit like Afleet Alex saving ground around the turn and then swinging out and exploding to the lead, taking charge as fast as Harry Reid took charge of the agenda with his brilliant closed session move in the Senate on Tuesday. Pleasant Home came home in 12.52 seconds for the last eighth. I’ve posted about her pedigree a couple of times, most recently in this post in which I designated her as my “super-duper longshot,” which now makes me feel super-duper stupid. I see that I also posted about her in April, and linked to this article in the Form about her illustrious bloodlines by Lauren Stitch.

The only thing I’ll add here is that she is from the same female family as the Real Quiet two year old filly in which I’m a partner through Castle Village. She has now been sold privately by trainer Billy Turner. Since it was a private sale, I guess that the amount should probably be private. But let’s just say that it was enough of a profit to maybe cover a good portion of whatever expenses she’s accumulated since we bought her and three others (another sold, one still on the farm, and Highland Cat) with the intent of pinhooking them. The Real Quiet filly’s dam, Dafnah, is an unraced Housebuster mare, and her third dam is the champion sprinter Gold Beauty, also the third dam of Pleasant Home.

- Sweet Symphony didn’t run a lick. I guess in this case, the workout reports were right. In the Gold rallied creditably for 5th in her first start against older fillies and mare; whether that’s enough to get her an Eclipse in the fractured three year old filly division is unclear. Too bad about Happy Ticket, who chose this day to finally run a bad race after not finishing worse than second in 12 tries.

"She wasn't herself today," owner Stewart Madison said of Happy Ticket. "The jock said he had to ask her to run the whole time. That's very disappointing, but hopefully there'll be another day and we'll run again." [New Orleans Times-Picayune]