Ce Ce looks to end stellar career with repeat Breeders' Cup win

Every trainer deals with the reality of having to bid farewell to their top charges once their racing careers come to a close. It is part and parcel with a vocation built on developing talent for what they hope is a productive second career.

Still, there are times when even veteran horsemen look at some of the runners in their care and wonder whether they’ll ever get another talent that will match that level.

Michael McCarthy isn’t holding his breath that another Ce Ce is coming down the pike anytime soon, simply because the champion daughter of Elusive Quality possesses too many qualities that are in too short a supply. In her four seasons on the track, the 6-year-old mare hasn’t left a stone unturned, with her career highlight being a victory in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint and subsequent Eclipse Award for divisional honors.

She has won Grade 1 races at distances of seven furlongs, one mile and 1 1/16 miles, and the list of those she has vanquished include two Kentucky Oaks winners in Serengeti Empress and Shedaresthedevil, as well as fellow female sprint champion Gamine.

Her scheduled outing in Saturday’s edition of the Filly & Mare Sprint at Keeneland – where she will attempt to join Groupie Doll as a two-time winner of the race – is set to be her final career start before beginning her broodmare career in 2023.

McCarthy doesn’t want to dwell on the fact that the days of Ce Ce being a stalwart presence in his shedrow are drawing to a close.

“Yeah, I try not to think too much about what’s going to happen after Saturday,” McCarthy said shortly before Ce Ce headed out for her morning training on Monday. “I’m just trying to lead her over there, and I certainly feel a responsibly to lead her over there in the best shape possible.

“I don’t want to screw it up.”

For 22 starts, 11 of which have resulted in victories, Ce Ce’s form has resided among the elite no matter which division she has dipped her toe into. Having not debuted until April of her sophomore year, Bo Hirsch’s homebred mare earned her first graded score when she captured the Beholder Mile (G1) in March 2020, her fifth career start, and she followed that breakout effort with a triumph the next month in the Apple Blossom Handicap (G1).

After Ce Ce capped off her 2020 campaign with a fifth-place effort in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, McCarthy made the decision to cut her back in distance for the majority of her 5-year-old season. It was a bit of a risky call, given the ongoing presence of brilliant 2020 Filly & Mare Sprint winner Gamine, but Ce Ce’s turn of foot in sprint tests made that choice look like a stroke of genius. She annexed the Princess Rooney Invitational (G2) and Chillingworth Stakes (G3) before dethroning Gamine with her 2 1/2-length triumph in last November’s Filly & Mare Sprint.

In this her final season of racing, Ce Ce again has flaunted a little bit of everything where her talent is concerned. Following a runner-up effort in the seven-furlong Santa Monica Stakes (G2) at Santa Anita Park on Feb. 5, the chestnut mare admirably returned to two turns, capturing the Azeri Stakes (G2) and finishing third in this year’s Apple Blossom. It has been back to sprinting in her last three starts, and repeat wins in the Princess Rooney and Chillingworth sandwiched a loss in the Ballerina Handicap (G1).

“It looks like she’s just as good as she was last year,” McCarthy said. “She’s kind of followed the same pattern to get here. This year, her comeback race was very good – Santa Anita and her have a love/hate relationship at times – and just the way scheduling and things worked out, the Azeri was sort of out there and we went ahead and took a shot. She was fantastic that day. And her race at Gulfstream (the Princess Rooney) was just awesome.”

Ce Ce was part of a compact field of five in last year’s Filly & Mare Sprint, but she will have to use her handiness to weave through a salty group of 12 other runners entered for Saturday’s test. Echo Zulu, the reigning champion juvenile filly, has only a single blemish on her record in seven starts – a fourth-place finish in the Kentucky Oaks (G1) this May – and morning-line choice Goodnight Olive has won five straight, including a 2 3/4-length victory in the Ballerina on Aug. 28.

One thing McCarthy knows he can be certain of after all this time with his first career champion is there isn’t a question Ce Ce hasn’t already proven capable of answering.

“It was little bit more of a boutique-size field last time in the Breeders’ Cup and obviously a full field here on Saturday. But she’s doing as well as we can ask for,” McCarthy said of Ce Ce. “She’s just an incredibly classy mare. I said it before: I wish all my colleagues, at one time in their lives, could have a mare like her, because all she does is try. We’re not lost in the fact of what she’s done for us, so we try to do everything right for her.”