Just F Y I spoils Tamara’s party by winning BC Juvenile Fillies

Arcadia, Calif.

Heavy breathing did in Tamara in what was supposed to be her coronation Friday. Instead, it was another filly who brought a 2-for-2 record to the Breeders’ Cup who emerged as a champion in waiting.

Just F Y I (7-1), a George Krikorian homebred who was sired by 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify, stalked Tamara thanks to an expert ride from Júnior Alvarado. Then she held off the late challenge of Jody’s Pride (17-1) to win by a neck in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita.

“Once I saw the filly Tamara was in the lead, it was easy for me to sit right off her since I wanted to make sure I had a target for my filly,” said Alvarado, whose first Breeders’ Cup win was with Cody’s Wish in last year’s Dirt Mile. “She’s never been on the lead, so I didn’t want to watch her do something she’d never done before. She was doing for the first time two turns, so I didn’t want to overdo too many things.”

Tamara (4-5), the lookalike daughter of Hall of Fame mare Beholder, wowed Southern California nearly two months ago when she won the Del Mar Debutante (G1) by 6 3/4 lengths. Stretching from seven furlongs to 1 1/16 miles Saturday, she looked poised to do it again after leading the first five furlongs. But in her first time racing around a second turn, she looked like she ran out of gas. She finished 8 1/4 lengths up the track and was seventh in the field of 12.

“She usually hits that turn and opens up two or three,” Tamara’s jockey Mike Smith said. “When she didn’t do that, I kind of knew that she wasn’t going to run today.”

After the race, Smith said something caught his ear from Tamara. Something that might yet explain her coming up short.

“When she pulled up, she kind of hung her head and made a little bit of noise like something was going on inside of her with her breathing a little,” Smith said, point to his throat. “Other than that, she came back fine. She was good and willing to fight again.”

“We’ll have to back up and give her a little chance to catch up and start over again,” Tamara’s trainer Richard Mandella said. “She’s just a 2-year-old filly. We’ll have to go back to the barn and see how things look.”

Tamara’s loss was Just F Y I’s gain. The winner of the Frizette (G1) last month in the slop at Aqueduct found the lead with three-sixteenths of a mile to go on Santa Anita’s fast main track. After widening her advantage to 1 1/2 lengths, Alvarado had just enough left to hold off Jody’s Pride, who had spent most of her trip stalking Tamara and Just F Y I.

“I got a good trip,” jockey Flavien Prat said of Jody’s Pride. “She was all game.”

Candied (5-2) closed from deep to finish third, three-quarters of a length behind. Life Talk (21-1) took fourth, and Scalable (33-1) moved up from last to come in fifth.

The winning time was 1:44.58 on a sunny, 85-degree day. Of the 36 runnings of the Juvenile Fillies at 1 1/16 miles, it was the 11th slowest. By comparison, 2-year-old colt Fierceness was clocked at 1:41.90 covering the same distance an hour later in the Juvenile. Tamara went out in 22.47, 46.60 and 1:10.95. Just F Y I took over to establish a 1:37.57 pace for the first mile.

Just F Y I paid $16.00, $7.20 and $4.80; Jody’s Pride $13.40 and $7.40; and Candied $3.40.

Trained by Bill Mott, Just F Y I has been coming right along since her victorious debut in a maiden sprint Aug. 26 at Saratoga.

“She won her first race going six furlongs, which was probably something that was out of her wheelhouse,” said Mott, a 13-time Breeders’ Cup winner. “She probably wanted to go further all along, but it was a good start, and we jumped right into a Grade 1 the second time. It’s pretty unusual for a horse to win a Grade 1 off just one maiden race.”

Krikorian said he expected a winter at Gulfstream Park would be on Just F Y I’s 2024 calendar. Mott said her more immediate future will be a break.

“I’d say a little R&R,” he said. “I guess I’ve just been trying to figure out how to go about it, what we want to do, what kind of a program to put her on. She deserves some time off, a little time to grow and fill out. Sometimes a short rest is not that good, because it’s harder to get them back. You’ve got to figure out what you want to do. You want to give them the rest but get them back in time for some of the big races in the spring.”

For the biggest of them, the Kentucky Oaks (G1), Unibet in England already has made Just F Y I its 7-2 favorite.