McPeek gets 1st Kentucky Oaks win with Thorpedo Anna

Louisville, Ky.

Thorpedo Anna went out in a hurry in Friday’s wet running of the Grade 1, $1.5 million Kentucky Oaks. Such a hurry that the trainers of two well-intended also-rans thought her retreat was inevitable.

“It looked like we had that filly on our radar,” Bill Mott after Just F Y I loomed into contention coming out of the second turn. “It looked like she could probably catch her from there. That filly just didn’t back up.”

“For a little moment there at the quarter pole, and she came around horses, and looking at the fractions, I was thinking could she inherit this win with a pace collapse?” Regulatory Risk’s trainer Chad Brown said. “But that wasn’t to be.”

Instead, Thorpedo Anna (4-1) did something she had not yet done in her previous four races. She led at every call to win by 4 3/4 lengths over late-closing favorite Just F Y I (7-2) with Regulatory Risk (29-1) in third.

The victory more than validated winning trainer Kenny McPeek’s confidence in the Fast Anna filly whose four wins have come by an average of 6 1/2 lengths. Actually, confidence would be an understatement.

“I had been quoted repeatedly all week,” said McPeek, who went winless with his first 14 Oaks fillies. “They better bring a bear, because I’ve got a grizzly. It wasn’t Babe Ruth calling his shot, but maybe.”

Brian Hernandez Jr. rode Thorpedo Anna confidently out of post 5 and angled to the rail, taking the lead into the first turn. Fiona’s Magic (40-1) and Ways and Means (5-1) offered early pressure onto the backstretch.

Ways and Means tried to get first run at a fading pace going into the second turn under Tyler Gaffalione, but Thorpedo Anna never faded. She was up to the task through early fractions of 22.87, 46.79 and 1:11.75.

“We kind of had a game plan going into it that if she left there running, just let her go forward under the wire the first time,” Hernandez said. “Once she did that, I was like, man, they’re going to have trouble beating her.”

Júnior Alvarado was next to turn up the heat when he took Just F Y I wide through the turn, three abreast of Thorpedo Anna and Ways and Means. But Hernandez held his ground along the rail and opened the lead to two lengths through a mile in 1:37.42.

José Ortiz brought Regulatory Risk down the middle of the track with right-handed urging past the quarter pole, but Thorpedo Anna kept widening her advantage through the finish line with a final time of 1:50.83 for the 1 1/8 miles on the sloppy, sealed main track.

Thorpedo Anna paid $10.98, $6.06 and $4.36; Just F Y I $5.06 and $3.98; and Regulatory Risk another three lengths back in third returned $11.82. Ways and Means finished fourth in the field of 14 3-year-old fillies.

Owned by Brookdale Racing, Mark Edwards, breeder Judy Hicks and McPeek’s wife Sherri, Thorpedo Anna was bought for $40,000 at a Fasig-Tipton sale in October 2022. Her path to the Oaks was interrupted by an injury that put her on the shelf between November, when she suffered her only loss, and the beginning of March.

“This past winter, we don’t know exactly when and how it happened, but she walked out of her stall lame and behind,” McPeek said. “We tried to walk her out of it. She wouldn’t come out of it. We trucked her (from Fair Grounds) to Kentucky and had Dr. (Larry) Bramlage look at her, and she had a bruise on the side of her hip the size of a softball. It was very unusual.”

Assured that it was nothing serious and that time would heal the wound, McPeek lost six weeks training Thorpedo Anna. Her comeback finally came at Oaklawn with a four-length victory in the Fantasy (G2), qualifying her to run for the lilies.

“When she won easy that day, it was OK,” McPeek said. “I thought she was about 80 percent. She did it like she was 110.”

McPeek ruled out the Black-Eyed Susan (G2) in two weeks at Pimlico as a possible next race. Instead, he said he might look a date during the Belmont Stakes meet in five weeks at Saratoga, where the Acorn (G1) would be the logical option.

“Ultimately I would like to get her to the Alabama (G1),” McPeek said, looking ahead to the Saratoga summer. “I would like to win another Alabama.”

McPeek won that race in 2018 with Eskimo Kisses and 2020 with Swiss Skydiver, the filly who inspired another suggestion for Thorpedo Anna. Would there be any thought about having her follow in Swiss Skydiver’s footsteps with a triumphant run against the boys in the Preakness?

“I have thought about it already,” he said, getting a laugh in the post-race news conference. “And you know, it would be like me to do something like that.”

That would cost the owners $200,000 to supplement into the $2 million race on May 18 at Pimlico. As facetious as he may have sounded, McPeek said he has toyed with the idea.

“I have said all week that I wasn’t scared to even run her against colts,” he said. “I mean, she’s that good.”