Antoinette Oppenheimer’s Valiant Girl snuck through down on the hedge to pull
“We had been targeting this race,” assistant trainer Dave Rock said. “She
The Graham Motion-trained four-year-old filly stalked the slow pace
Valiant Girl was up on the pace in the early stages but started to lose some
“She’s the type of filly that will run off,” jockey Matthew Rispoli said. “I
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Angelica Zapata came in second by a neck over Strathnaver in third. Parranda,
Rose to Gold, Somali Lemonade, 5-2 favorite Naples Bay, Sure Route, Awesome
Flower, Millennia and Team rounded out the order of finish.
Valiant Girl covered 1 1/8 miles over the good turf in 1:52 3/5 for her second stakes score. The daughter of Lemon Drop Kid
now has a career line which reads 14-4-1-1 and $130,847 in lifetime earnings.
Valiant Girl started her career in Great Britain, winning just once out of
five starts before shipping over to the states earlier this year to begin her
four-year-old campaign. In her second start of 2013 she captured an allowance race by a nose at Tampa
Bay Downs in March. The filly took down her U.S. stakes debut by a head in the Omnibus
on August 24 at Monmouth Park and followed that performance up the following
month with a disappointing eighth in her graded debut in the Flower Bowl
Invitational at Belmont. The bay was exiting a seventh-place finish in the
Dowager Stakes on October 20 at Keeneland.
Bred in Great Britain by Hascombe and Valiant Studs, Valiant Girl is out of
the winning Mark of Esteem mare Victoria Cross, which makes her a full sister to
multiple English Group 2 scorer Bronze Cannon. Her second dam is multiple
English Group 2-placed Glowing With Pride, who produced Grade 2 victor Prize
Giving. Valiant Girl’s female family also includes multiple Grade 1 winner
and Italian highweight Alpride.
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