RSS Feed for this Blog
RSS Feed for all TBA Posts

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Prince Dubai Strikes Turf Gold at the Spa

Bona Venture Stables, featured here last month, broke its maiden at Saratoga yesterday in a big way. Prince Dubai ($57.50) went off at odds of 27-1 and won the $49K 1 1/16th mile allowance for NY-breds in the seventh race on the Mellon Turf at ye olde Saratoga Race Course yesterday. If you were paying attention to the BVS twitter account you would have seen that this horse was ready to roll. The win by the gelding by E. Dubai out of Princess Caveat (by Caveat) was the inaugural win for Bona Venture Stables at Saratoga. The Prince is trained by Leah Gyarmati, ridden by Norberto Arroyo, Jr. and was bred by that famous Partridge kid, David Cassidy. I hope I get a chance to meet the Prince in two weeks when we visit the backstretch during Travers Day.

Perfectly timed, the victory came during a weekend when BVS' managing partner, Dan Collins was hosting a group of his ownership. He politely had invited me to attend, but I was distracted by the seven kids I was chasing at a water park in Buffalo all day. I was quite excited to read of the win upon settling down at the computer late last night and sent him a congratulatory email. He quickly responded, "We were very high on Prince Dubai today. The pattern was improving. Today was his fourth on the turf and he only lost last time out by 1 3/4 lengths. That pattern said he was prime for a big win. We had 40 people with us at the track today and many went to the IRS window and we heard people yelling among the crowd, "Go Bonnies! This was Bona Venture Stables first ever win at Saratoga, the queen of American race tracks!" Way to go, BVS.

Ironically, the horse finishing fifth (at 50-1) in the same race, Brushed Prince, was the horse the Space Gal wrote a guest blog on last summer. I watched the replay this morning and jockey Arroyo did a nice job getting Prince Dubai past the front running Fortissi More with Leparoux aboard in the stretch drive and held off both the charging Tobruk and Quiet On The Tee at the wire. Quite the exciting race.

1 Comment:

Steve Zorn said...

Leah Gyarmati, who also trains for my outfit (Castle Village Farm) does very well with horses that hardly ever cost a lot of money. I put her into the training business 10 years ago, and she promptly won the Maryland Million Distaff for us with her very first horse, Flippy Diane. NIce to see her get a Saratoga win.

 

blogger templates 3 columns | Make Money Online