Thursday, October 24, 2024 at 9:49 am |
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Updated: October 24, 2024 at 9:50 am

By Bill Finley

Some of the best fillies and mares in the world will soon descend on Southern California for the Breeders’ Cup. But one of the fastest fillies in the sport will spend the afternoon in a stall for the GI Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff, while her trainer, Michael McCarthy. figures out path he wants to take with 3-year-old filly Accuracy (Arrogate). She’s certainly not ready for the Breeders’ Cup after maiden win, but a phenomenal performance in an Oct. 19 race at Santa Anita suggest the Mike Repole owned 3-year-old could develop into a star.

Not an overnight success, she ran third in both of her first races and received modest speed figures. Still a maiden and stretching out to a mile-and-a-sixteenth, she put it all together and then some in the Oct. 19 maiden. Taking the lead from the start, she was tracked by the filly Nafisa (Quality Road). It seems that horse and jockey (Umberto Rispoli) were just playing around while sticking close to Nafisa. Finally, at the three-sixteenths poll, Rispoli called on his mount and she kicked into another gear while her pursuers seemed to be running in quicksand.

She won by 15 lengths and covered the mile-and-a-sixteenth in 1:42.44. But the real story was the figure. The Beyer team gave her a 108. Eclipse Award candidate Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) is the only filly to have posted a better number all year. That was the 111 she earned when finishing second against the boys in the GI DK Travers Stakes.

“I knew she had been training well,” McCarthy said “Her second start was a little bit of a muddled trip. She was boxed in between horses and forced out the middle of the racetrack on the first turn. Then she sort of got into drive to maintain her position up the backside. She made a couple of different moves that day. She came back and trained a little better for that race than she did going into it, which was odd. I was expecting a solid effort for sure, but I never expected to see something like that. She kind of ran away from them again coming to the quarter poll and that kind of surprised me.”

With Mike Repole spreading his horses around and not relying totally on Todd Pletcher, McCarthy–a former assistant to the Hall of Famer–said he had eight or nine horses owned by Repole.

But McCarthy did not have her from the outset and said that’s why he doesn’t know what prevented Accuracy from getting to the races until August of her 3-year-old year.

It’s going to take some time and a few races to figure out how good the filly is, but her first big test may come in the Dec. 26 GI La Brea Stakes at Santa Anita.

“I’d like to find one more race,” McCarthy said. “We may have to back her up for the seven-eights in something like the La Brea for 3-year-old fillies. That seems like the most likely spot. We will get together with everyone at Team Repole. There are a lot of moving parts.”

And what does he expect from Accuracy next year as a 4-year-old?

“You hope she’s able to go ahead and maybe not replicate that performance and the margin of victory the other day. but replicate the same kind of number,” McCarthy said. “It’s always nice to have a fresh 4-year-old filly heading into the new year. If she is lucky enough to find her way into the La Brea that would be terrific.

And if things go according to plan there’s no reason why she couldn’t make it to the 2025 Breeders’ Cup as a contender for the Distaff or, perhaps, the GI Maker’s Mark Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint. She certainly seems fast enough.

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This story was posted in Top News and tagged Accuracy, Arrogate, Beyer Speed Figure, Bill Finley, Breeders’ Cup, GI Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff, Horse Racing, maiden winner, Michael McCarthy, Nafisa, Repole Stable, Santa Anita Park, thoroughbreds, Thorpedo Anna, Umberto Rispoli.