Full Sister to Sadler's Joy Beats Kinchen at 20-1 Odds
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Photo: Coglianese Photos
Hail To wins her second start at Saratoga Race Course
The sixth race at Saratoga Race Course was truly a family affair.
One of the starters in the 1 1/16-mile turf maiden race for 2-year-old fillies Aug. 29 was Kinchen a first-time starter named for Ralph Kinchen, the late father of noted handicapper Jonathon Kinchen.
Owned by Bob Edwards' e Five Racing Thoroughbreds and trained by Chad Brown, she was the 4-1 third choice in a field of nine that included the likes of Gun Boat , a War Front filly out of graded stakes winner Onus ; Pearl Earring , a half sister to grade 2 winner Pixelate ; and the favored Bali Belle , who had a placed effort in the books.
Also in the field was Hail To , a full sister to Sadler's Joy , a $2.6 million earner who was recently retired and is bound for a life at stud in Turkey. After finishing fifth in her July 22 debut, she was sent off at 20-1.
Considering how unpredictable racing at Saratoga can be, it should be viewed as only a minor surprise that the winner of that race was Hail To ($43.60) with Kinchen finishing a game second by three-quarters of a length after breaking slowly and having to close between horses in the final furlong.
Kinchen (center) finishes second in a maiden race at Saratoga
Hail To, by Kitten's Joy out of the Dynaformer mare Dynaire, is owned and bred by Woodslane Farm and trained by Tom Albertrani, the same connections that bred and raced the grade 1-winning Sadler's Joy, an 8-year-old who won four graded stakes.
"Hopefully she can pick up where her big brother left off," Albertrani said. "He'll be well missed in the barn. We had him for five years.
"I knew she would need that first race. It was deep ground and she set some pretty good fractions. She just tired from her efforts. She was very fit today and was in a perfect spot and she had something left."
The filly covered the 1 1/16 miles in 1:43.35 on firm turf under Ricardo Santana Jr.
Dynaire has produced seven foals to race and six are winners. Aside from Sadler's Joy she has dropped the stakes-placed Lunaire (by Malibu Moon) and Dyna Passer (Lemon Drop Kid ) as well as Wolfie's Dynaghost (Ghostzapper ), who was third in Sunday's $120,000 Better Talk Now Stakes at the Spa.
For Kinchen, the popular handicapper on the New York Racing Association's FOX Sports television show, it was an emotional afternoon as he viewed a race from a different perspective.
"I am horse player and stuff like that happens all the time in betting," Kinchen said about the troubled trip. "I'm in tune enough with the game to know she's a good horse and that's all I care about. I just want her to win races, get some pictures taken at some point, and it feels like she might be a stakes horse. It was disappointing in the moment and it would have been cool if she won, but I couldn't be happier and could not be more appreciative of what Bob Edwards and (his wife) Kris did by naming her after my dad.
"With all the planning," he added, "It wasn't until I walked up the stairs to get to the boxes and took a deep breath that I realized what was happening and I got emotional. Right before the race I also got emotional, but to be fair, after the gates opened it was like any other race in which I wanted a horse to win."
Bred in Ireland by Edwards' Fifth Avenue Bloodstock, Kinchen is by Lope de Vega out of the Galileo mare Miss Nouriya and is a half sister to a Dark Angel yearling colt.