A ‘Wow!’ Performance from Close Hatches in Personal Ensign

Close Hatches dominated the opposition on Friday in the Grade 1 Personal Ensign Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. (Photo by NYRA/Lauren King)
By Tom Pedulla, America’s Best Racing
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Wow!
Close Hatches staged that kind of performance when she took command early and pulled away late to win the $500,000 Personal Ensign Stakes by a rousing 5 lengths against longshot Fiftyshadesofhay on Friday at muddy Saratoga Race Course.
“I guess she was like a prizefighter who says, ‘Let’s get this one over with.’ She was in that kind of mood,” said Garrett O’Rourke, racing manager for triumphant Juddmonte Farms.
The 4-year-old daughter of First Defence won for the fourth time in as many starts this year in an eye-catching campaign that opened with a 1 ¼-length victory in the Grade 2 Azeri Stakes at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark. She rattled off three Grade 1 scores after that, leading from start to finish to take the Apple Blossom Handicap by the same margin as the Azeri before rating kindly to edge Princess of Sylmar by a head in the Ogden Phipps Stakes.
Close Hatches’ early knockout in the Personal Ensign brought her ninth triumph in 12 career starts with a pair of runner-up efforts. She won for the sixth time in her last seven races with the lone blemish coming in the 2013 Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Beholder bested her by 4 ¼ lengths at Santa Anita Park, the winner’s home track.
Trainer Bill Mott praised Close Hatches for being so consistent.
“She’s never run a bad race other than the Kentucky Oaks, and she was a little inexperienced at the time,” he said. She ran a disappointing seventh when Princess of Sylmar, a Pennsylvania-bred, pulled a stunning upset in the Oaks last year.
“I think she’s definitely improved three or four lengths from where she was last year,” O’Rourke said. “She’s a bigger, stronger filly than she was.”

2014 PERSONAL ENSIGN STAKES

Courtesy of NYRA
Close Hatches was rated a slight favorite against Princess of Sylmar in the Personal Ensign. It said much about the direction in which the two fillies are seemingly headed that Princess of Sylmar, adding blinkers after second-place finishes in the Ogden Phipps and Delaware Handicap, was no better than fifth. Stanwyck rallied for third with Antipathy fourth.
Javier Castellano, who rode Princess of Sylmar, was puzzled by her distant finish.
“I guess she just didn’t like the mud. I really don’t have the answer,” he said. “She had a beautiful spot, and on the backside she was really running. But when she got to the quarter-pole, she was done. I didn’t have horse at all.”
Despite that, Castellano thought the blinkers were useful.
“I think the blinkers helped a lot,” he said. “She used to be too far back, and with the blinkers she was a little more into the race. It just wasn’t her day.”
Close Hatches, reaching for ground with her long stride and all but gliding over the gooey surface, withstood testing fractions of :23.05 for the opening quarter of a mile, :46.61 for the half-mile and 1:11.12 for the first three-quarters of a mile. She remained strong in the stretch as she finished the 1 1/8-mile race in 1:50.62.
Mott targeted the Personal Ensign immediately after the Phipps, allowing her to take a deep breath before the rest of the campaign.
“When you point to a race a long way out and the work and the plans you made fall into place, it is gratifying because so many times the plans don’t work out,” he said.
The Hall of Fame trainer plans to send Close Hatches into the Spinster Stakes on Oct. 5 at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky., to prepare her for the Distaff with the hope of putting an exclamation point on a perfect year.
For an Equibase chart, click here.
CLOSE HATCHES TOUR DE FORCE

Photo by NYRA