Queen Maxima Starts Season in Las Cienegas

Dutch Girl Holdings and Irving Ventures' Queen Maxima  is set to make her 5-year-old debut in the $100,000 Las Cienegas Stakes (G3T) Jan. 11. The daughter of Bucchero   will face eight older fillies and mares in the 6 1/2-furlong event over the downhill turf course at Santa Anita Park.

During a 5-for-7 season at 4 last year, Queen Maxima captured the Monrovia Stakes (G3T) and Unbridled Sidney Stakes (G3T) to cap a five-race win streak extending back to December 2024. A pair of challenging trips in her next two starts resulted in uncharacteristic sixth-place finishes, including against males in the Green Flash Handicap (G3T), before she ended the year with a 1-length victory in the 5-furlong Senator Ken Maddy Stakes Oct. 31.

Trained by Jeff Mullins, the even-money morning-line favorite will break from the rail Sunday.

Queen Maxima will face a class-dropping Spicybug  and a pair of improving Southern Hemisphere imports in her first test of the year. 

Mike Rutherford's Spicybug has shown an affinity for Santa Anita, winning four of her five starts at the track including one at 6 1/2 furlongs on the downhill course. After that ratings handicap win Oct. 25, trainer Michael McCarthy stretched her out to a mile for the Matriarch Stakes (G1T) at Del Mar, where she finished a weakening ninth. The daughter of Speightstown should relish a cutback in distance and a return to Santa Anita.

Egyptian Mau , a group 3 winner in her native South Africa, enters the Las Cienegas off her first North American win for trainer Neil Drysdale, while Peruvian stakes winner Princesa Moche  is riding a two-race win streak for Doug O'Neill.