Anita Cauley’s homebred On Fire Baby tuned up for a bid in next week’s Grade
1, $500,000 Spinster at Keeneland with a
five-furlong work over her home track at Churchill Downs on Saturday.
The Gary Hartlage-trained four-year-old had regular rider Joe Johnson in the saddle and completed the work in
1:01 2/5 over the fast track. The work ranked ninth among 30 at the distance, with internal fractions
of :25 1/5 and :37 3/5 with a gallop out time of 1:14 2/5 for six furlongs.
“We sharpened her up a little bit today,” Hartlage said.
“She went five-eighths instead of the seven-eighths I’ve been working her. She’s
been training a little bit harder now than she has into her other races. She’s
acting like she’s really on top of her game. It’s hard for Joe to hold her in
her morning gallops, so we just put five-eighths in her today and let her gallop
out.”
Hartlage said the goal was to put “a little edge” on the
gray daughter of Smoke Glacken in the final major training move prior to the 1 1/8-mile Spinster, a
Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” Challenge Series race for the Breeders’ Cup
Distaff at Santa Anita.
“I wanted to see her come down the lane and she if she’d
get down on her belly, and she did,” he said. “She lowered her head and she came
runnin’, and that’s everything we wanted. Now she’s got to show up over there.”
On Fire Baby, fourth in
her most recent outing in the Personal Ensign at Saratoga, will make only
her second career start over a synthetic surface in the Spinster. She ran fifth
in Keeneland’s Alcibiades at two, but Hartlage considers that be a
deceptively good race. The Alcibiades followed a win in her debut at Ellis Park,
her first race at a two-turn distance and over the new surface, and she broke
from the outside post in a field of 14 that day.
“That was a big, big race for her,” Hartlage asserted, “and she
came out of that race super good.”
She followed the Polytrack contest with wins in Churchill Downs’ Pocahontas
and Golden Rod, but she was uneven in four starts
at three — including a fifth-place run in the Kentucky
Oaks — and went to the sidelines for nearly a year following a dull
fourth-place run in the Acorn at Belmont Park.
On Fire Baby opened her 2013 campaign with victory in
the Apple Blossom at Oaklawn Park on April 12, then suffered a narrow head loss in the La Troienne at Churchill on Kentucky Oaks Day prior to her Saratoga
setback. Her efforts since that disappointing run in her training under the Twin
Spires have Hartlage looking forward to next week’s journey to Lexington,
Kentucky.
“She was super good this year at Oaklawn, and right now I
think she’s back to that,” Hartlage said. “She would really fool me if she
doesn’t run real good.”
A victory in the Spinster by On Fire Baby could earn Cauley’s filly a trip to Southern California for the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, but
Hartlage said that a Breeders’ Cup run has not been a year-long goal for his
filly.
“I think we probably would (go) if she won,” he admitted. “If
we do, we do. The Breeders’ Cup is not a big deal to me. It would all depend on
her, and how she comes out of the race.”
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