Ornellaia, out of $18,000 Schumer Bloodstock purchase Scarlet Dixie, made a brilliant start to her career at Saratoga on Saturday.
Sporting the colours of Amo Racing Ltd and Mark Marxer and trained by Chad Brown, the $1.1 million Fasig-Tipton Midlantic May Two-year-olds in Training sale-topper flew from the back of the field to win the 7f event by daylight and earn ‘TDN Rising Star’ status.
“Before the race, everyone was saying it was one of the hottest maidens of the year,” Kia Joorabchian told the TDN. “When you miss the break like that and are that far behind, the chances of catching up in a race like that are almost zero. So, we said, `well, that was really very unfortunate, but she’ll gain some experience from it,’ because we always liked her. We said there was no way she could catch them from there. But the stride on her!
“We saw her coming and then, for a second, the feed went out, so we missed the second where she went from behind the pack to catching up to the pack, and then of course went right on past them. I have seen other people’s horses do that, but I haven’t ever seen one of mine do that, ever, so that was quite impressive.”
By girvin, Ornellaia is the third foal out of Scarlet Dixie, whose first two – Adios Dixie and Cool Dixie Man – are both winners. Scarlet Dixie is a winning Broken Vow relation to King’s Bishop Stakes winner Chimes Band.
