Eye-catching debut winner Magic Dance leads Churchill's Debutante

Three Chimneys Farm’s eye-catching 4 ½-length maiden winner Magic Dance will lead a field of nine 2-year-old fillies in Saturday’s 119th running of the $125,000 Debutante Stakes at Churchill Downs.

The Debutante will go as Race 10 at 5:26 p.m. with the $125,000 Bashford Manor (G3) for 2-year-olds and the $120,000-added Kelly’s Landing Overnight Stakes for older sprinters also on Churchill's closing day card. 

Magic Dance (1: 1-0-0—$54,848), a 2-year-old daughter of More Than Ready, dazzled in her debut, a five-furlong maiden special weight contest on June 7. The precocious filly will attempt to give trainer Steve Asmussen his fifth win in this race and the first since Rated Feisty won the 2007 edition in a stakes record performance of 1:09.27.

Jockey Ricardo Santana Jr. has the call on Magic Dance, who will break from post position No. 7.

Chief among Magic Dance’s competitors in the Debutante is Chuck and Maribeth Sandford’s homebred Indy Takes Charge, who won at first asking by 3 ¼ lengths for trainer Pat Byrne. Indy Takes Charge (1: 1-0-0—$30,128) holds a special place with the Sandford team, as she is by their multiple stakes-winning sire Take Charge Indy.

“It’s always special to have (Take Charge Indy) progeny in the barn,” Byrne said. “He was a very special horse to Maribeth and her late husband Chuck. (Indy Takes Charge) has that precociousness as her sire did.”

Indy Takes Charge will be ridden by Chris Landeros from post 2. 

Also entered in the Debutante is California invader Cholula Lips (1: 1-0-0—$39,000), who won a state-bred maiden special weight contest at Santa Anita by 3 ¼ lengths for owners Terry Lovingier and Amanda Navarro for trainer Mike Harrington. West Coast-based rider Rafael Bejarano has the call from post 6.

The field for the Debutante from the rail out (with jockey and trainer): Secretly Wicked (Chantal Sutherland, John Hancock); Indy Takes Charge (Landeros, Byrne); Megan Marie (Corey Lanerie, Jonathan Nance); Street Flyer(Tyler Baze, James Chapman); My Good Girl (Carlos Villasana, Marco Castaneda); Cholula Lips (Bejarano, Harrington); Magic Dance (Santana, Asmussen); Lady George (Florent Geroux, Carla Morgan); and Lady Glamour(James Graham, Larry Demeritte). 

The group that purchased the financially troubled Louisville Jockey Club from founder Col. M. Lewis Clark in 1894 created the Debutante along with the Louisville Handicap in 1895.