Fantastic Style romps home in the Great Lady M

There have been plenty of extremely impressive sprinting performances of late. Masochistic, Private Zone, Favorite Tale, and Super Majesty readily come to mind. After today’s feature at Los Alamitos, you can add the name Fantastic Style to that list. Facing older mares for the first time, the three-year-old daughter of Harlan’s Holiday won the Grade 2 Great Lady M in, well, fantastic style.

Sent off as the 5-2 second choice behind the previously undefeated Sunday Rules, Fantastic Style sat chilly under rider Rafael Bejarano as the pair of Amaranth and the race favorite went out winging in fast fractions. All alone in third, the Bob Baffert trained miss had a great look at the action, as the leaders rattled off fractions of :21.42 and :44.04. It was the first time that the fleet young filly had not gone right to the early lead. This new style of running not only would prove to serve Fantastic Style well today, but also figures to make her a much more dangerous commodity in any big sprint race for females the rest of 2015 and beyond.

When Bejarano asked the talented filly to go after the top two, her answer was strong and immediate. She quickly forged to the lead and sprinted clear of her competition early in the long Los Alamitos lane. From there it was just a matter of Bejarano holding on to the wire. Not even the best of the late runners could worry Fantastic Style on this day.

Living the Life made a sustained rally off the fast early fractions to finish clearly best of the rest, but a full 3 ½ lengths shy of the impressive winner. Sunday Rules, who suffered her first career defeat, ran on for third, but was another 3 ¼ lengths behind the runner-up. The classy Warren’s Veneda, cutting back to a sprint distance for the first time in seven starts, rounded out the superfecta.

Fantastic Style was bred in Kentucky by Kidder, Cole & Voute, and was plucked out of the 2014 OBS April Sale by owner Kaleem Shah for a cool $525,000. She raised her lifetime record to 6-4-1-1, while scoring her first graded stakes victory. In her previous start, she also scorched the California earth, having won the seven furlong Angel Flight Stakes at Santa Anita by more than three lengths in 1:20 1/5. Considering the competition, today she was even better.

Final time for the 6 ½ furlongs over the fast track was a sparkling 1:14.78, and just a tick of the Los Alamitos track record. Fantastic Style returned $7.00 to her many backers, while the exacta over Living the Life returned a generous $49.60.

After running second in her career debut, Fantastic Style has now won 4-of-5, with her only recent loss coming in her only trip east, when she finished third in Keeneland’s Grade 2 Beaumont. With more seasoning under her belt, and on the strength of today’s overwhelming performance, it would seem that the fleet filly has earned another trip east, perhaps as soon as the prestigious Grade 1 Test Stakes at Saratoga on August 8.