DEL MAR – Trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Clinton Potts had some extra reasons to celebrate in the winner's circle after yesterday's Generous Portion Stakes for 2-year-old California-bred fillies.
Potts celebrated his 37th birthday with the victory aboard Ten Churros. It was Potts' first stakes win of the meeting, not that surprising since he only has three here in his career.
What is surprising is that it was Baffert's first stakes victory of the meeting, too. Baffert routinely won stakes races at Del Mar in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he was the leading trainer here for seven straight meetings. He went an unprecedented 5-for-5 in Del Mar's Grade I races in 1999 and is still the track's all-time leading stakes conditioner with 79 wins.
But it took him until the last week of the meeting to get his first stakes victory. It also was his fifth win of the meeting, a total that once represented about a week's work for him here.
“Well, I got my stakes for the meet,” Baffert said. “Now I can go home. I didn't get the doughnut.”
Asked why stakes wins here were tougher to come by for him, Baffert said, “It's the horses . . . the synthetic (track), they either like it or they don't like it. It's a different type of surface. So you have to find the ones that like it, and the ones that don't like it go to New York. Makes it tough on the owners. I'd like to keep them all here.”
Baffert hadn't been training Ten Churros rigorously because he feared how she'd handle the Polytrack. She ran short in her last race here on July 18, finishing fourth after fading in the stretch. He added blinkers to get the filly to relax and replaced jockey David Flores with Potts, who had ridden Ten Churros to her maiden win at Hollywood Park on June 26.
“I was really careful with her,” Baffert said. “I decided to put Clinton back on her. You get to the point where you're trying anything to see if it works.”
Baffert and owners Hal and Patti Earnhardt likely will enter Ten Churros in the Cal Cup Juvenile Fillies race at Oak Tree at Santa Anita.
Ten Churros, by High Brite out of Grana, covered the six furlongs in 1:11.61 and won by 2½ lengths over Tammy's Luck. Ten Churros paid $9.80, $5.40 and $3.80. Trash Master was third. Favored Streamin Heat finished last in the seven-filly field.
Notes
Yvett's Hope, a 2-year-old colt owned by Tricar Stables Inc., and trained by
Sal Gonzalez, fractured a left hind leg in the eighth race and was euthanized. Yvett's Hope is the fifth horse to be euthanized after breaking down in afternoon racing this meeting. Jockey
Agapito Delgadillo, who was aboard the colt, reportedly was uninjured.
Jockey Martin Pedroza, 43, is three victories from 3,000 after scoring back-to-back upset wins, both for trainer Jack Carava. Pedroza rode Blushing Bearcat ($31) in the third to start the Pick Six and won on Miss Lydia (17.80) in the fourth. Pedroza had two wins on Pacific Classic Sunday.
Dodgers pitcher Brad Penny is on the disabled list and not having a good season (6-9, 6.05 ERA), but he had the winning horse in the second race, Camo ($19.80). Another long shot, Gobbler's Knob ($6.60 to place), was second, making for a hefty $54.30 exacta for any hunters playing a hunch bet on these two.
The second-day Pick Six carryover was $473,943. The last time the Pick Six went to a third day, it climbed to $3,615,780.
Ed Zieralski: (619) 293-1225; ed.zieralski@uniontrib.com
