Sunday Morning Notes

We were at Swami's Beach in Encinitas, just a few miles north of Del Mar, on Saturday morning.  Barely a cloud in the sky with the familiar morning fog, known as the marine layer, nowhere in sight these days.  It's a special little slice of the planet, as spiritual as the name may suggest.

The racetrack too was resplendent in the uninterrupted sunshine.  That hasn't helped me - in fact perhaps it's proven a distraction, as I've yet to cash a ticket through two days.  It also just could be because I suck.  At least I was getting closer on Saturday.  Still, thinking I may need a swami to get me back in the game.

A couple of horses - both two-year old fillies - well worth mentioning from the day.  In the 5th, Pure Indy ($8.40) was bet down from 8-1 morning line in her first career start; perhaps because a bunch of her West Point owners were in town.  But maybe instead it was a reflection of whatever it was about her sales work that prompted the owners to pay $195,000 for a daughter of the $7,500 sire Pure Prize at the Barretts two-year old in training sale earlier this year.  Looked like the former when the filly trailed in dead last down the backstretch.  But not when Victor Espinoza tipped her five wide turning for home and just blew by them all, despite lugging in a bit early in the stretch run to win going away under a long hold late.  Even Trevor Denman, best in the business at picking up such late moves, didn't do so this time until the sixteenth pole.  Unfortunately for me, 20-1 Controlled Chaos split me in the exacta.  But it was the kind of performance from a debuting two-year old that can make one fall in love and mark down for possible future glory.  Pure Indy is out of a winless AP Indy mare who's a half-sister to the graded stakes winner Greater Good, who ran with a similar closing style, the G1 winner Pure Clan; and this is also the distaff family of the Belmont winner Danzig Connection.  So I'd say that her distance prospects are quite good.

In the G1 Del Mar Debutante, 4-5 favorite Executiveprivilege seemed beaten at the sixteenth pole, but staged a desperate last surge, even while drifting out a path, to just barely collar the loose-on-the-lead Beholder on the wire to remain undefeated, for Baffert, in four tries.  It was her third stakes win.  The finish reminded me of -- and don't go nuts on me here, not at all comparing the horses, just the visual -- Forego nailing Honest Pleasure in the 1976 Marlboro Cup.  It was a gutsy effort indeed.  Executiveprevilege is by First Samurai, his only graded stakes winner thus far (her second such win); out of an Unaccounted For mare.   Her third dam is the great Calumet champion Davona Dale (not so hot in the breeding shed).  The Juvie Fillies is no doubt on the calendar for this filly.