Bouquet Booth Wires Silverbulletday
Right Time Racing LLC’s Bouquet Booth grasped an opportunity to control the early pace and held on determinedly to prevail by a neck over James M. Miller’s Daisy Devine in Saturday’s $100,000 Silverbulletday Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots.
The Silverbulletday at one mile and 40 yards is the first in Fair Grounds’ three-race stakes series for sophomore fillies that culminates with the Grade II Fair Grounds Oaks on March 26.
Bouquet Booth, given a heads-up ride by Shaun Bridgmohan for trainer Steve Margolis, took the lead into the first turn when none of the anticipated pacesetters struck the front and was clear by a length while setting moderate fractions of 24.53 and 48.67. After six furlongs in 1:13.28, Bridgmohan asked for more run as Daisy Devine ranged to within a half-length. Bouquet Booth kept on in the stretch and held on to win in a final time of 1:41.24, while Daisy Devine secured second a length to the good of Gold Square’s Little Miss Holly.
“She’s a fighter,” Bridgmohan said of Bouquet Booth. “They came up to her and she got a little tired at the end but she knew what she was doing and she gutted it out.”
The winner, by Flower Alley out of the Loup Sauvage mare Toll Order, paid $5.20, $3.40 and $2.40 as the favorite. Daisy Devine paid $9.40 and $5.60, while Little Miss Holly, also trained by Margolis, paid $3.40.
“She’s got a lot of class,” Margolis said of the winner. “She showed a lot of determination because the other horse had just won over the track. We were coming off of a two-month semi-layoff by design. She showed the grit and the multi-dimensional way about this filly.”
Margolis acknowledged the March 26 Grade II Fair Grounds Oaks as a likely steppingstone to the Kentucky Oaks but suggested a start in the Feb. 19 Grade III Rachel Alexandra Stakes might not be necessary in the interim.
The top three finishers maintained their running order throughout the entire race. Wahoo Babe finished fourth, followed by Aide, Ambient and Seans Silverdancer. Chloe Kate was scratched after drawing into an allowance race Thursday, which she won.