Rose To Gold ready to bounce back in the Delta Downs Princess
The Grade 3, $1 million Delta Downs Jackpot Stakes is for 2-year-old colts and geldings, but the race’s companion stakes race accommodates the filly, and it goes by the name of Grade 3, $500,000 Delta Downs Princess Stakes, which will be run over a mile.
The Delta Downs Princess Stakes like its male version, has reeled in 9 juvenile fillies, but it’s a diverse field that includes the likes of the Grade 2 Adirondack runner-up, Salamera; the undefeated winner of the $100,000 Presque Isle Debutante, Unhedged, and the all the way from Southern California, Madame Cactus, who won the $150,000 My Trusty Cat Stakes.
Despite some seriously good fillies participating in the Princess, there is one who turned heads when she posted her first two career victories by a combined margin of 26 lengths.
Trained by Sal Santoro for owner Kathleen Amaya, Rose To Gold was winning at Calder race course for fun, as she won her debut race, the Lindsay Frolic Stakes over 1 mile on 25 August, and in her next race was stepped up in distance, but responded brilliantly, to take the Brave Raj Stakes over 1 mile and 70 yards on 15 September, 2012.
However, an experiment to step her up in class went awry, when she finished a non-threatening 12th in the Grade 1 Alcibiades Stakes over a distance of 1 1/16 miles at Keeneland on 5 October.
“We went to the Alcibiades, which was on Polytrack, and she hated it,” said Sal Santoro, who trains Rose to Gold for Kathleen Amaya and Raffaele Centofanti. “The rider told me after the race that we wasted our time coming up here running on the Poly. He said she never got into the hunt. She wasn’t comfortable on it.”
Prior to the Alcibiades, the 2-year-old filly by Friends Lake had shipped to Keeneland 10 days before the race, and has returned to her homebase in Calder, and according to her trainer, she is thriving in every aspect of training.
“We got her back home and she kind of fell into her old routine,” said Santoro. “She started eating good again, started putting on weight again.”
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