Beholder Brilliant in Del Mar Breeze

Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens wasn't aboard to work Spendthrift Farm's Beholder during her last drill in preparation for the $300,000 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes (gr. I), but he was in the grandstand to watch the bay mare as she breezed through five furlongs in a brilliant :59 1/5 at Del Mar.

After a walk back to the barn with trainer Richard Mandella, Stevens looked up at exercise rider Janeen Painter and smiled.

"You have fun?" Stevens asked.

"You know it's fun," Painter quipped, squinting her eyes at the jockey with feigned annoyance.

The feeling at the Mandella barn was rightfully blissful immediately after the breeze by the daughter of Henny Hughes. Beginning at the half-mile pole, a few lengths behind a workmate, Beholder coasted by her stablemate on the turn and opened up three to four lengths at the wire. She worked past the wire to earn her official clocking, but Mandella had her even quicker on his stopwatch, at :58 3/5.

All that came with context. Visually, the three-time champion seemingly could not have done it any easier.

"When she was actually doing it, I thought, 'Geez, they're going kinda slow,' " Mandella said. "Then I looked down and, 'Whoa.' "

Mandella, not one to break out into song, couldn't help himself as he walked away from the grandstand. The Hall of Fame trainer, with a smile plastered on his face, started to croon Buck Owens' "Act Naturally."

"Gonna make a big star out of me," he said as he trailed off.

"It was meant to go off a little easy and finish like we do most of the time, and it was a little quicker than we'd planned, but she does that often," Mandella said at his barn. "I think we're in pretty good shape."

It was Beholder's sixth workout in preparation for the Hirsch, following her eighth straight stakes score June 4 in the Vanity Mile (gr. I).

"I find her to overcome my training. That's the most important thing," Mandella said jokingly. "In a lot of ways, she has gotten better every year. She has got an ornery streak, but that could be part of why she's so good."