Ask the Moon shows how good she is by winning the Grade 1 Personal Ensign at Saratoga
In the field of six older fillies and mares, Ask the Moon kept going to win the $300,000 Grade 1 Personal Ensign and proved her 18 to 1 score in the Grade 1 Ruffian Invitational on 31 July, 2011 was no fluke by any means.
The six-year-old Martin Wolfson trained mare notched her second grade 1 victory of the Saratoga meet, as she jumped in the front right from the outset and ran erratically through the lane from start to finish to capture one of the most prestigious race of
the meet.
Sent as the 2 to 1 morning line favourtie, Ask the Moon under Javier Castellano set solid early fractions despite going on the outside badly in the 1 ¼ mile event from the three-sixteenths pole to hit the wire placed at the middle of the track by 2 ¾ lengths.
She nearly lost the lead while drifting out on the outside, but under strong urging form jockey Javier Castellano, Ask the Moon checked her run, and still went on to finish strongly.
The 5-year-old chestnut filly, Pachattack was running on dirt for the first time in her career, fought valiantly as she finished second by a head over comparatively younger Tiz Miz Sue.
The six-year-old Malibu Moon completed the 10 furlong distance in a slow 2 minutes and 4.21 seconds.
Ask the Moon played catch me if you can, just like she did in the Grade 1 Ruffian, where she took on the distance of 1 1/8 miles under Javier Castellano on the Saratoga dirt and cleared the field considerably to down her rivals Super Espresso and Payton
D’oro in 1 minute and 50.46 seconds.
Javier Castellano after the race said, that he did not want to fight with the front running mare, and that he allowed her to do what she wanted to do after getting a massive lead.
It was being thrown around that Ask the Moon got lucky the last time she ran in the Grade 1 Ruffian Stakes, and it was said that her competition in the Ruffian allowed her to gain the lead and go over the wire from there.
Javier Castellano strongly disagreed and said that she improved a lot and she went to win the race.
As far as trainer Wolfson was concerned, he thought it was an awesome performance by his older mare. Wolfson wasn’t present at the racecourse, he saw the race from south Florida.
Ask the Moon might be headed west, where she will have a golden opportunity to run down the awesome Blind Luck in the Grade 1 Lady’s Secret at Santa Anita on 1 October, 2011.
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