Street Band Upsets Fair Grounds Oaks
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Photo: Hodges Photography / Amanda Hodges Weir
Street Band wins the Fair Grounds Oaks at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots
Larry Jones has a way with the fillies, and his latest star could soar straight to the top of her division.
Winner of the Kentucky Oaks (G1) with Proud Spell in 2008, Believe You Can in 2012, and Lovely Maria in 2015, Jones unleashed homebred Street Band March 23 with a 10-1 upset of the $400,000 Twinspires.com Fair Grounds Oaks (G2) at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots.
A 3 3/4-length victory under Sophie Doyle gave Street Band 100 points on the Road to the Kentucky Oaks and sent the 3-year-old daughter of Istan straight to the top of the Kentucky Oaks leaderboard with 105, more than enough to make the 14-horse field May 4 at Churchill Downs.
Not only is Street Band trained by Jones, but she was bred by the Kentucky hardboot and his wife, Cindy, in partnership with Ray Francis. The chestnut filly came off a troubled fourth in the Feb. 16 Rachel Alexandra Stakes (G2) at Fair Grounds and collected her first graded win Saturday.
Despite a bit of bumping at the break, Street Band emerged well from the hustle out of the gate and was taken in hand in the two path from post 3 in a seven-horse field as 1-5 favorite Serengeti Empress showed the way. While Serengeti Empress put up fractions of :24.12, :47.48, and 1:11.86 in the 1 1/16-mile test, Street Band rated just off the pace before she was asked to go three wide at the quarter pole.
Liora briefly assumed the advantage when the frontrunner faded just inside the five-sixteenths, but Street Band ranged up and took command with a furlong to go, then drew clear under steady urging. Liora held for second and Sweet Diane was third.
The final time was 1:44.54.
Although Serengeti Empress bled, faded to last, and rode home via an equine ambulance after walking on under her own power, trainer Tom Amoss reported she was comfortable and "100% sound" back at the barn.
Channing Hill, aboard Liora, knew he had conquered the fading favorite but was shocked to see Street Band pass him in deep stretch. Liora was the runner-up to Serengeti Empress in the Rachel Alexandra and now has 71 points to rank second on the Kentucky Oaks leaderboard.
"Once I put (Serengeti Empress) away, I was just hoping my filly wouldn't pull up, and she didn't," Hill said. "She ran all the way to the wire. I cannot believe that horse went by me."
"Today we just had a beautiful trip, and everything set up right," Doyle said of Street Band's winning effort. "Her head dropped down today and she traveled into the bit. The last time her head was up and she was fighting me a bit, and every step was like, 'Relax, filly, relax.' Today she took it like a professional and traveled great."
"When I asked her down the back, I just squeezed and said, 'What do we have in the tank at this point?' And she filled her lungs up again around the turn and when I called on her, she got that little split to make a run, and, God, she opened up and she exploded."
Street Band was bred in Kentucky out of the winning Street Cry mare Street Minstrel. The mare foaled a full sister to Street Band named Street Missy in 2017, produced a Summer Front colt in 2018, and was bred back to Summer Front for 2019. Jones sold the mare to former Kentucky Gov. Brereton C. Jones, a longtime client and the owner of Airdrie Stud, after Street Missy was foaled. Like her seven siblings, Street Band was foaled and raised at Airdrie.
"You just can't push this mare's babies a lot," Larry Jones said. "They're a little bit hot-blooded, and you've kind of got to let them come along on their own before you cause more problems than you can fix. But this mare's babies all wanted to go two turns, so once we got the bottom in her, we knew she could go two turns, and, needless to say, she's on the improve."
Jones had high hopes for Street Band when she was entered in her first race July 23, a 5 1/2-furlong maiden special weight at Delaware Park, but the filly came in last of eight by 28 3/4 lengths.
"At one time (in her early training), we really started thinking this might really be the real deal here," Jones recalled. "When I hauled her to Delaware for her first start, we thought that, and then when she got beat more than 20 lengths, I thought, 'What was I thinking?' But then we took her to Ellis Park and she won for fun, and we decided we were just going to let her prove it to us. Today was a big day for her."
Street Band broke her maiden at second asking by 7 1/4 lengths going six furlongs at Ellis Park in September, and she won again four starts later Jan. 13 by a determined nose in a mile-and-70-yard allowance/optional claimer at Fair Grounds. The Fair Grounds Oaks win improved her record to three wins and two thirds from eight starts, with earnings of $310,325. According to Jones, she will ship next week to Churchill to begin preparations for the biggest test of her career.
"The Fair Grounds Oaks has been very kind to us," Jones said. "Proud Spell won it, and Believe You Can won it, and the year we had Lovely Maria we also had I'm a Chatterbox and we decided to split them up, and I'm a Chatterbox ran third (in the Longines Kentucky Oaks) and Lovely Maria won the Ashland and then won the Kentucky Oaks.
"There's been a lot of fillies win the Kentucky Oaks after winning the Fair Grounds Oaks, so we're going to go and try to represent that race the best we can."