Lauralea Glaser Rides First Winner in 398 Days Friday

LAUREL, MD – LC Racing, Cash is King and Gary Barber’s stakes winner Morning Matcha could be headed to the $250,000 Black-Eyed Susan (G2) May 20 at historic Pimlico Race Course following a sharp breeze Friday morning.

“She worked really well this morning, and if all goes well for the next week we may take a stab in there,” trainer Robert E. ‘Butch’ Reid Jr. said. “We couldn’t have asked for it to have gone any better.”

Morning Matcha worked four furlongs in 47.56 seconds at Parx, the fastest of 14 horses at the distance. It was her first work since finishing sixth in the April 9 Gazelle (G3) at Aqueduct, which marked the first off-the-board finish in her 10-race career.

“She doesn’t normally breeze that fast, but the track had a little moisture in it,” Reid said. “If we do come [to Pimlico], I’ll be looking for a little moisture in the track. She seems to like that a lot – a good, firm track with a little wet.”

Bred in Pennsylvania, Morning Matcha owns three wins, four seconds and two thirds racing in New York, New Jersery and Pennsylvania. Her most recent victory came by 6 ¾ lengths in the one-mile, 70-yard Main Line March 8 at Parx.

The 98th Black-Eyed Susan for 3-year-old fillies would be the second straight graded-stakes start for Morning Matcha and third time going 1 1/8 miles, the distance she covered when second in the Jan. 23 Busanda at Aqueduct to open her season.

“She came out of her last race good and we gave her a little bit of extra time on this one,” Reid said. “She needs a little pace in front of her which she hasn’t gotten, but a lot of times in the Black-Eyed Susan with a good-sized field there can be a little pace. She’ll benefit from that.”

Among the horses pointing to the Black-Eyed Susan are Adare Manor, Beguine, Distinctlypossible, Divine Huntress, Favor, Interstatedaydream, Luna Belle, Midnight Stroll, Missy Greer and Radio Days.

Lauralea Glaser Rides First Winner in 398 Days Friday

Herman Braude’s Jimmy the Kid cruised to a front-running 2 ¾-length triumph in Friday’s fifth race at historic Pimlico Race Course, giving jockey Lauralea Glaser a win with her first mount in 398 days.

Jimmy the Kid ($8), a 4-year-old gelding trained by Richard Sillaman, ran six furlongs in 1:11.01 over a fast main track in the claiming event for 3-year-olds and up that had never won two races.

“Jimmy is a horse I get on every morning,” Glaser said. “Looking at his past races, he prefers to be on the front end. He’s pretty quick out of the gate so I let him break, let him get out front, and there were some other horses that came up early to us. He seemed pretty relaxed with it so I just sat and he drew away from them going around the turn and when I asked him to kick on he just kicked on.

“It feels great, especially for Ricky,” she added. “He’s always been good to me and I’ve worked on and off for him for the last eight years. It’s always good to kind of come back home and work for somebody like that.”

Glaser, 28, had not ridden in a race since last April 11 at Laurel Park. She rode only 12 races in 2021 and now has 83 career wins from 873 mounts since 2014.

“It was just the way things happened,” she said. “Last spring, Laurel shut down to do some repairs. I was working for [trainer] Cal Lynch at the time and he was going up to Fair Hill and I didn’t want to make the move up there, so I took a little time off. Then Ricky called me and said he was headed to Tampa for the winter, so I went down there and galloped for the winter and came back here. [I’m] just taking things as they come.”

A native of Bliss, N.Y., a small farming community of little more than 500 residents located about an hour southeast of Buffalo, Glaser grew up with horses. After graduating from Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron’s North American Racing Academy she embarked on a pro riding career in Maryland.

Glaser won her first professional race in October 2014 and 58 more over the next three years before deciding to take a break. She didn’t ride a race between Dec. 15, 2017 and July 27, 2019, picking up the first win of her comeback July 27, 2019. Glaser had 17 wins from 75 mounts in 2020, and has earned nearly $2 million in purses in her career.

“I’ve tried to make a point of doing this because it makes me happy,” she said. “I’ve tried to do this full-time, riding races, and it ends up being more stressful than fun and that’s not why I got into it. I try to pick and choose and do it just to make me happy.”

Notes: Jockey Jevian Toledo and trainer Brittany Russell teamed up for back-to-back wins Friday with first-time starter Royal Whisper ($3.20) in Race 6, a maiden special weight for 3-year-old fillies, and 5-year-old gelding Call Me Plucky ($6) in Race 7, a turf allowance for Maryland-bred/sired horses. Royal Whisper sprinted six furlongs in 1:10.83 over a fast main track, while Call Me Plucky completed 1 1/16 miles in 1:45.85 on the firm course … Trainer Richard Sillaman sent out two winners Friday, R Tenderoni ($5.40) in Race 2 and Jimmy the Kid ($8) in Race 5 … There will be a carryover of $3,178.28 in the 20-cent Rainbow 6 for Saturday’s nine-race program that begins at 12:40 p.m. Multiple tickets with all six winners Friday each returned $1,038.08.