Hello Beautiful Opens 2021 Season in $100,000 What a Summer
Hello Beautiful Opens 2021 Season in $100,000 What a Summer
Lynch Seeking Breakthrough Win with Wendell Fong in $100,000 Fire Plug
LAUREL, MD – With an eye on the future and a nod to her successful past, Madaket Stables, Albert Frassetto, Mark Parkinson, K-Mac Stables and Magic City Stables’ multiple stakes winner Hello Beautiful will open her 4-year-old season in Saturday’s $100,000 What a Summer at Laurel Park.
The 35th running of the What a Summer for fillies and mares 4 and older and 25th renewal of the $100,000 Fire Plug for 4-year-olds and up, both sprinting six furlongs, are among six stakes worth $550,000 in purses on a Winter Carnival program that kicks off Maryland’s 2021 stakes calendar.
Post time for the first of nine races is 12:25 p.m.
Hello Beautiful, by Golden Lad, won back-to-back stakes to cap both her 2 and 3-year-old seasons, taking the Maryland Million Lassie and Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship in 2019 and last year’s Maryland Million Distaff and Safely Kept.
Though she will be making her earliest season debut, not having started previously before May, Hello Beautiful enters the What a Summer not having run since the Nov. 28 Safely Kept, a seven-furlong sprint where she drew off to win by three lengths.
“She’s doing really well. We spaced her races out a little bit more this time,” trainer Brittany Russell said. “It’s exciting. We’re looking forward to it. If she keeps doing the way she’s done over the course of the last few months, I feel very good about everything.
“With horses, you just go day to day,” she added. “She’s in that first stall, and it’s just fun to walk in the barn and see her face every day.”
Hello Beautiful won three of her last four races at 2, the only defeat in that stretch coming by a neck on the grass to subsequent two-time turf stakes winner American Giant, and lost Maryland-bred champion honors to 2019 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1) winner Sharing.
A planned break combined with a pause in live racing amid the coronavirus pandemic to push Hello Beautiful’s 2020 debut to June, a failed turf try off a six-month layoff. She went back into stakes company after a runaway allowance win just 19 days later, but class and circumstance were too much to overcome in off-the-board finishes in the Audubon Oaks and Prioress (G2).
Hello Beautiful resoundingly returned to form to win the Distaff by 11 ¼ lengths, her first time reunited with regular rider Sheldon Russell in four months since breaking his wrist last July. They teamed up again in the Safely Kept and will break together from Post 3 in a field of nine.
Brittany Russell said the connections are hoping to use the What a Summer as a springboard to the $250,000 Runhappy Barbara Fritchie (G3) Feb. 13 at Laurel, a seven-furlong sprint for older females entering its 69th year. Hello Beautiful is a perfect 6-0 over Laurel’s main track.
“The goal, obviously, is the Fritchie, so we were trying to figure out the best way to get there and it was kind of just going to be about what she was telling us in the morning,” Russell said. “She’s begging to run right now. So, that’s why we’re going for this and, hopefully, it serves as a good setup for the Fritchie.”
Malibu Mischief, based in New York with owner-trainer Rudy Rodriguez, lost for the first time in seven races when third by less than three lengths to Dontletsweetfoolya in the six-furlong Willa On the Move Dec. 26, her second career stakes attempt. Four of the wins during her streak, the last two at Laurel, came after being claimed for $12,500 last summer.
Trainer Jonathan Thomas will ship in the pair of Escapade and Bridlewood Cat for the What a Summer. Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners’ Escapade, who has raced primarily on grass and synthetic surfaces, was beaten a head when second to Jean Elizabeth, a winner of 10 stakes including two Grade 3s, in an off-the-turf edition of 2019 Abundantia at Gulfstream Park
Bridlewood Farm’s Bridlewood Cat, by Kentucky Derby (G1) winner Street Sense, returned off a layoff to be fifth in the Garland of Roses Dec. 6 at Aqueduct. She was fourth, beaten only a half-length, in the 2020 Correction last March.
Mike Trombetta-trained stablemates Bella Aurora and New York Groove look to return to their stakes-winning form following a winless 2020. Country Life Farm’s Bella Aurora won the 2019
Lynch Seeking Breakthrough Win with Wendell Fong in $100,000 Fire Plug
Still seeking her first career win as a trainer, Maryland’s own Natalia Lynch couldn’t imagine a better horse getting it done in a better place than Gold Square’s Wendell Fong in Saturday’s $100,000 Fire Plug at Laurel Park.
Lynch, 26, has a long association with Wendell Fong going back to when she was working as an assistant to trainer Jeremiah Englehart, overseeing his Laurel string. Lynch helped prepare the now 5-year-old son of Flat Out for his debut, which he won in the final month of 2018, as well as his lone stakes victory in the 2019 Gold Fever at Belmont Park.
After getting a class break in his last two starts, Wendell Fong returns to stakes company looking to reward Lynch’s devotion and dedication. Lynch is winless with four seconds from Gin Talking on the dirt at Laurel while Commonwealth New Era Racing’s New York Groove took the 2019 Presque Isle Debutante on the synthetic.
Stakes-placed Club Car, fourth last out in the Willa On the Move; Cause I’m Edgy and Tarawa round out the field.16 starters since going out on her own last summer; Wendell Fong will be No. 17.
“He got sent to me before his first start and he just kind of became the barn favorite real quick. He’s got a real cool personality. He’s just one of those special horses,” Lynch said. “I don’t think there could be a more fitting horse for me to get my first win.”
Lynch began galloping horses while at Walter Johnson High School in Montgomery County and continued while pursuing a nursing degree, first at Towson University and then at Shepherd University in West Virginia.
She worked for trainers Graham Motion at Fair Hill and Brendan Walsh in Florida, eventually hooking on as the top exercise rider and assistant for Englehart’s Laurel string, overseeing 29 horses during the winter. The daughter of a horse dentist, she also worked for trainers Brittany Russell and Phil Schoenthal in Maryland and Jim Bond in New York.
“Just to see the horse win would be more amazing to me than anything else,” Lynch said. “For me it’s cool because I came from Laurel and it’s kind of like full circle to see my name back there as a trainer. It means a lot.
“I love it. I feel like it’s always kind of what I’ve worked for,” she added. “I always put a lot of pressure on myself but when you see your name in the program it’s about 10,000 times more pressure than before. But it’s been really good and my support system has been awesome. There have been days where if I don’t believe in myself, they believe in me. So it’s helped.”
Wendell Fong ran in the Woody Stephens (G1), Amsterdam (G2) and Count Fleet (G3) while still with Englehart, finishing behind the likes of Hog Creek Hustle, Shancelot and Whitmore. He made one start for Robertino Diodoro before landing back with Lynch when she went out on her own.
After two off-the-board finishes, Wendell Fong rediscovered his form running second by 1 ½ lengths behind fellow stakes winner Taco Supream in a six-furlong optional claiming allowance Dec. 3 at Laurel, where he has a 2-1-0 record in four tries.
“We were all very, very happy with that. It was really good to see him come and get his confidence back and he came out of that race very well. He seems a little bit more like the old horse he used to be,” Lynch said.
“I think that’s kind of what makes him special. I think he went under the radar for a little bit,” she added. “You look at the company he was running against. He was running against Mind Control and Whitmore and definitely never really hit an easy field. Even though he didn’t win, he was still running great races.”
Sheldon Russell will ride Wendell Fong from Post 1 in a field of seven.
To achieve Lynch’s breakthrough win, Wendell Fong will have to beat a solid collection of sprinters led by Hillside Equestrian Meadows’ Laki, nose winner of the Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash (G3) Oct. 3 at Pimlico Race Course, his sixth career stakes win. Three of his others have come at Laurel, where he was second in the Frank Y. Whiteley and fourth in the Dave’s Friend to cap 2020.
Silvino Ramirez’s Share the Ride, last out winner of the six-furlong Fall Highweight (G3) Nov. 29 at Aqueduct. The 6-year-old gelding won the Mr. Prospector last summer at Monmouth Park, a race where Wendell Fong ran fourth, and was beaten a head when second to Majestic Dunhill in the Bold Ruler (G3) in October.
Penguin Power, a multiple stakes winner at Charles Town with 13 career victories who ran third by two lengths in the Dave’s Friend; upset Maryland Million Sprint winner Karan's Notion; Lebda, winner of Laurel’s Miracle Wood and Private Terms last winter; and New York-bred stakes winner Arthur’s Hope complete the field.
