Bonny South prevails in three-way stretch battle to win Doubledogdare

Juddmonte’s homebred Bonny South outdueled Royal Flag and Graceful Princess through a three-way stretch battle to win the 26th running of the $100,000 Doubledogdare (G3) for fillies and mares on a sun-splashed Friday afternoon.

Trained by Brad Cox and ridden by Florent Geroux, Bonny South covered the 1 1/16 miles on a fast main track in 1:43.46 to win her 4-year-old debut.

Graceful Princess set the pace with Speech tracking in second through fractions of :24.11 and :48.02. Entering the far turn, Bonny South began to move to the outside of Graceful Princess with Royal Flag moving right behind her. 

Bonny South stuck her head in front at the eighth pole and refused to yield to the late bid from Royal Flag to claim the victory. 

“I felt like physically she’d moved forward from (age) 3 to 4," Cox said. "She’s certainly been working that way in the mornings. She had a big work last weekend at Churchill and was kinda touting herself. Florent did a good job realizing there wasn’t a lot of pace. She had a little bit of a wide trip and dug in late. I was very proud of her.” 

The victory was worth $60,000 and increased Bonny South’s earnings to $592,150 with a record of 9: 4-3-0 with two graded stakes victories. Bonny South is a 4-year-old Kentucky-bred daughter of Munnings out of the Tapit mare Touch the Star. 

Bonny South returned $9.40, $4.20 and $3.20. Royal Flag, ridden by Joel Rosario, returned $3.60 and $2.80 with Graceful Princess finishing another head back in third under Luis Saez and returning $4.40 to show. 

It was another 4 1/2 lengths back to Eres Tu, who was followed in order by High Regard and favored Speech, who was eased on the second turn. 

Racing continues Saturday afternoon with a 10-race program beginning at 1:05 p.m. EDT and featuring the $200,000 Elkhorn (G2) for older horses going 1 1/2 miles on the turf. The Elkhorn will be the afternoon’s ninth race with a 5:30 p.m. EDT post time.