Civil Union Takes Glens Falls for Third Straight Win
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Photo: Tim Lanahan
Civil Union wins the Glens Falls Stakes at Saratoga Race Course
After one plan worked out perfectly, trainer Shug McGaughey may scrap another.
When Civil Union won the July 12 River Memories Stakes at 1 1/2 miles, McGaughey ignored the temptation of a race like the Aug. 8 Waya Stakes (G3T) and circled Sept. 5 as the date for the 5-year-old's next start in the 1 3/8-mile Glens Falls Stakes (G2T) for fillies and mares at Saratoga Race Course.
Beyond that, he was leaning toward sending her to Keeneland, where the 12-furlong Rood & Riddle Dowager Stakes (G3T) is scheduled for Oct. 18.
Yet after watching Allen Stable's homebred daughter of War Front show her class in winning the $200,000 Glens Falls, the Hall of Fame trainer just might keep her in New York for the Oct. 10 Flower Bowl Stakes (G1T) at Belmont Park.
"I planned on going to Keeneland, but now the Flower Bowl could be a possibility with the way she's running," McGaughey said.
It was the third consecutive victory for Civil Union, who entered McGaughey's barn this year after starting her career with four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Chad Brown.
"I think she can run all day. When she won the River Memories, she really punched hard from the eighth pole to the wire, and she did the same thing today. It looks like when you ask her to go on and finish, she has it in her," McGaughey said.
In posting her first graded stakes win, Civil Union joined her full brother, group 3 winner War Dispatch, to become the second group/graded stakes winner from her dam, the Unbridled's Song mare Photograph. All eight of the mare's foals were sired by War Front. Photograph also has two group 3-placed runners and another winner in addition to an unraced 2-year-old colt named Battle of Britain and a weanling colt named Operation Torch.
In winning for the fourth time in seven starts, Civil Union, ridden by Joel Rosario, overcame slow early fractions. Third much of the way, about two lengths behind, she grabbed the lead at the sixteenth pole while three wide in the stretch and then held off a late bid by My Sister Nat, who is trained by Brown and owned by Peter Brant, a cousin of Allen Racing chief Joe Allen, to win by a length. The final time was 2:19.80.
"It was a slow pace, but I was right there and just trying to keep my position. I knew the horses in front were going very easy, and I thought with the slow pace they might keep going, but I was there. My horse was right there, and she made everything easy for me," Rosario said.
My Sister Nat, an Acclamation mare coming off an emotional win in the Waya, a race named for a mare owned by Brant, was last under Jose Ortiz in the field of seven as a pair of Tom Albertrani-trained runners, Beau Belle and Lovely Lucky, carved out dawdling fractions of :26.76, :53:22, and 1:19.58 on the firm turf.
She was fifth at the eighth pole but managed to nose out Mark Anderson's Beau Belle, a daughter of Giant's Causeway, for second.
"She's got no speed at all. She broke a little weird and there was nothing I could do. The pace was very slow. I couldn't really make a middle move, so I saved as much ground as I could and she gave me a great run turning for home," Ortiz said.