Eye on the Oaks: Condo Commando

Condo Commando gallops to victory in the Busher Stakes in the snow at Aqueduct. (Photo by NYRA/Susie Raisher)
The sister race to the Kentucky Derby, the $1-million, 1 1/8-mile Kentucky Oaks is held annually at Churchill Downs on the Friday before the Derby and restricted to 3-year-old fillies (young female horses). Eye on the Oaks, which will run through the 2015 edition of the race, takes a closer look at fillies who have won important races and could make an impact as we move toward the first Friday in May.
This week we take a look at Condo Commando, winner of Saturday’s Busher Stakes at Aqueduct.

Condo Commando made her sophomore debut the same way she ended her 2-year-old season—with a resounding victory. Though her winning margin of 4 ¾ lengths in the Busher wasn’t as impressive as her 11 ½-length romp in November’s Demoiselle Stakes, Condo Commando dominated nonetheless and sits atop the Kentucky Oaks leaderboard with 61 points.
Racing Résumé
If you had $75,000 at Saratoga last summer, you could have claimed Condo Commando out of her first start. No one did, and the filly followed up her 12-length debut tally with a “splashtastic” score in Saratoga’s Grade 1, seven furlong Spinaway Stakes by 13 ¼ lengths over a sloppy, sealed track.
2014 SPINAWAY STAKES

Condo Commando headed into the Frizette Stakes at Belmont an odds-on favorite to duplicate her Grade 1 win over a sloppy track, but she never made the pace and failed to fire, finishing a dull fourth in her first try routing. The 1 1/16-mile race would prove to be the only blemish on her season record.
Trainer Rudy Rodriguez and owners Michael Dubb, Bethlehem Stables and The Elkstone Group opted to bypass both the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies and Aqueduct’s Nov. 2 Tempted Stakes in favor of the Grade 2 Demoiselle on Nov. 29. The decision was a wise one, as Condo Commando galloped to another open-length victory, this time by 11 ½ lengths in the 1 1/8-mile contest.
After more than two months off, Condo Commando made a triumphant return to competition as a 3-year-old in a snowy edition of the Busher Stakes at Aqueduct. Sent postward a .20-to-1 favorite, she sprinted to the front under new jockey Junior Alvarado to set fractions of :48.78 for the half-mile and 1:13.14 for six furlongs, drawing off to a 4 ¾ length win after 1 1/16 miles. The filly earned a career-high 105 Equibase Speed Figure for her effort, impressing Alvarado in his first race teaming with her.
"She was much the best. By the middle of the first turn she was settled and I had control,” he said. “After that, it was just about making sure you didn't fall [off]. At the end she was pretty much playing and she galloped out very nice."
2015 BUSHER STAKES

Running Style
Condo Commando is a bona fide front-runner. In every race she’s made the lead, she’s won impressively. In the only race she didn’t, she finished a disappointing fourth. Speed horses sometimes have trouble stretching out to longer distances, but Condo Commando has already shown she can handle the Kentucky Oaks’ 1 1/8-mile route of ground. Whether she can handle pressure on the lead is yet to be discovered, as her wins have all come in races where she has galloped along on an uncontested pace.
Pedigree

Previous Editions ofEye on the Oaks 
Seduire
Take Charge Brandi
I'm a Chatterbox
Birdatthewire
Callback
Overprepared
Angela Renee

A $72,000 purchase at the 2013 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, Condo Commando is a daughter of Tiz Wonderful, out of the multiple graded stakes winning General Meeting mare Yearly Report.
Tiz Wonderful has four crops of racing age, with Condo Commando his only Grade 1 winner. His fillies seem to do best, with graded stakes winners My Happy Face and Sherzinger plus stakes winner Wonder Gal also to his credit, but he also has graded stakes winning colts In Trouble and Big Trouble. As of Feb. 23, 2014, he has 132 winners from 197 starters and nearly $10-million in progeny earnings, good for second place on the third-crop sires list behind Curlin. His 2015 crop will be his last in the U.S. as he was sold last year to stand in South Korea.
Yearly Report is a daughter of stakes winner Fiscal Year and a product of Eclipse champion breeders John and Betty Mabee’s California breeding program. Yearly Report captured the Delaware Oaks, the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes and the Santa Ynez Stakes as a 3-year-old and she has had success as a broodmare also, with four winners from four starters.
Condo Commando’s second dam, Fiscal Year, has thrown seven winners from eight starters, with Yearly Report being her best performer. Interestingly, Fiscal Year’s daughter Profit Girl, a full sister to Yearly Report, also has a 3-year-old filly that performed in a stakes this weekend, with her filly Bossy finishing second in the Cincinnati Trophy Stakes at Turfway Park. Third and fourth dams Fiscal Gold and Fiscal Fun produced decent horses but were both unraced, the latter a half-sister to stakes winners Brief Truce and Again Tomorrow.
Condo Commando has shown brilliance in four of her five starts so far, with a combined margin of victory of 41 ½ lengths, and she is one to watch as the competition gets tougher and we draw closer to the first Friday in May.