Filly gives ‘Valiant’ effort in My Charmer

Valiant Girl snuck through on the inside to upset the My Charmer (Calder/Coady Photography) Antoinette Oppenheimer’s Valiant Girl snuck through down on the hedge to pull off a shocker in Saturday’s Grade 3, $100,000 My Charmer Handicap at Calder Race Course as the 42-1 second longshot and paid $87.60, $31.60 and $13.40 to her few supporters. “We had been targeting this race,” assistant trainer Dave Rock said. “She shouldn’t have been that much of a long shot.” The Graham Motion-trained four-year-old filly stalked the slow pace down on the inside as eventual fifth-place finisher Rose to Gold led the field through opening leisurely fractions of :25 4/5, :52 4/5 and 1:17 1/5. Valiant Girl was up on the pace in the early stages but started to lose some ground around the far turn. The 7-2 second choice Angelica Zapata emerged with the lead at the top of the stretch and looked like she might put the race away. But Valiant Girl dug in late to find an opening against the hedge and prevailed by a half-length for the upset. “She’s the type of filly that will run off,” jockey Matthew Rispoli said. “I discussed it with Graham, and we decided that it would be best if we could cover up behind horses and it just worked out the best for us.”

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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