Kentucky Oaks starter Sealy Hill has a Toronto cheering section
TORONTO, May 2 * Sealy Hill may be a longshot to win Friday’s Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs, but for enthusiastic followers of Canadian racing and trainer Mark Casse, the talented filly is a fan favorite.
Owned by Eugene and Laura Melnyk and bred in Ontario, Sealy Hill drew post 12 in the 1 1/8-mile event, the most important race in North America for three-year-old fillies.
Casse employs one of racing’s few absolutes to justify his filly’s participation in the $500,000 affair.
“You have to be in it to win it. Right?” declared Casse, who was named Canada’s Outstanding Trainer in 2006. “A lot of people want to sit back and say, ‘I wouldn’t run there or I wouldn’t do this.’ Until you’ve ever been there and experienced it, you don’t understand it. This opportunity doesn’t come around very often. When it’s there and you have some kind of shot, you have to take it.”
Indeed, taking a horse to the Oaks is rare, but for Casse, Sealy Hill represents his second shot in as many years at the coveted Kentucky prize. Last May, he saddled Top Notch Lady, who ran eighth, defeated just 7 ¾ lengths.
One year later, Casse said he’s entering the Oaks with a better filly, but not necessarily a better chance.
“If we were going back to (last year’s) Oaks with the same field, Sealy Hill would be one of the favorites. This is a really tough Oaks, but Sealy Hill is a much better filly than Top Notch Lady,” said Casse.
Nonetheless, the two fillies aren’t without similarities. Like Top Notch Lady, Sealy Hill won the Glorious Song Stakes as a two-year-old and returned as a sophomore to win Turfway’s Bourbonette Breeders’ Cup Stakes in her final Oaks prep.
The one-mile Polytrack event was Sealy Hill’s second start of the season, coming almost two months after a second-place finish at Gulfstream Park, her three-year-old debut.
Casse said Sealy Hill needed to run well in the Bourbonette for him to consider the Oaks, which had been a target since the end of her strong two-year-old campaign.
In the Bourbonette, in front of the fans of Kentucky racing, Sealy Hill reproduced the middle speed that had generated many a superlative at Woodbine at the end of 2006 when she won two of three races in overpowering fashion.
Essentially, Sealy Hill duplicated her Glorious Song performance. She relaxed in fifth, staying about four lengths off the pace until a half-mile had elapsed. Jockey Patrick Husbands angled her to the outside where she made an eye-catching rally to the front.
At the eighth-pole, Sealy Hill had opened up a 2 ½-length lead. Unlike the Glorious Song, which she won by 8 ½ lengths, the Bourbonette wasn’t over.
“I thought, turning for home, it was just a matter of how far she going to win by. Patrick said he was trying not to make the lead too early because he could tell that she had her ears pricked and she was looking around. She made the lead a little earlier and kind of pulled herself up.”
That opened the door for lightly-raced Panty Raid to make the race interesting in the final furlong. At the wire, Sealy Hill prevailed by a head.
“We won’t have a problem making the lead too early. She’ll have plenty to run at. She’s going to have to step up and run a much bigger race,” he said.
As a lightly-raced filly who moved forward in her second start of the season, Sealy Hill could be sitting on the best race of her career.
“It’s a tricky game,” explained Casse. “You need to run enough that your horse has got some experience but you don’t want to do too much. You can’t go in all the preps. I had said that I wanted to get two races into her if we were going to make the Oaks. That’s kind of what we did.”
The Kentucky Oaks is slated for race 10 on Friday’s stakes-filled 11-race program.
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