May Day Ready Holds Sway in Lake Placid Stakes

When May Day Ready broke her maiden at Saratoga Race Course last summer, she closed from a distant ninth place and just got up by a nose, a running style that she employed during most of her seven lifetime races. But in the $400,000 Lake Placid Stakes (G2T) at Saratoga Aug. 23, the bay filly went right to the front under new jockey Jose Ortiz and stayed there, holding off a late-charging Play With Fire, the race's 1.55-1 favorite, by a half-length. The strategy may not have exactly been the plan, according to trainer Joe Lee, who did say that he left it up to Ortiz to determine where the filly would be in the early going of the one-mile race over a firm inner turf. "I'd like to see her sitting behind," he said. "But the way it worked out today, Jose played the break, and he decided to just go ahead and go on." The final time was 1:35.70 and May Day Ready returned $5.70. Bred in Kentucky by White Birch Farm and owned by KatieRich Stables, May Day Ready cost $325,000 at last year's Ocala Breeders' Sales April Sale of 2-Year-Olds in Training. With the win in the Lake Placid, she's earned a shade more than $1.3 million. The Tapit filly is out of the multiple graded stakes-placed Nemoralia (More Than Ready). She began her career with three straight wins, including the Jessamine Stakes (G2T) at Keeneland last October. Following a second-place performance in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1T), she headed to Japan to run in the Hanshin Juvenile Fillies (G1), where she finished 13th. Both owner Larry Doyle and Lee take the blame for that decision. "We thought we could go over there and get an easy win," Doyle said. "My farm manager hated the idea. Joe was against the idea, and I'm the idiot who forged ahead and did it." Lee has extensive experience racing in Japan, including an 11-year stint working as a training assistant for his father-in-law, and he tells a bit of a different story. "It was all too easy for me to think that the way she was doing, it was a no-brainer," he said. "But we had to take her off Regu-Mate so that she wouldn't get in season, and I think that really cost her. She just ran around there with the pack and came back to the barn hardly blowing. That was my mistake." May Day Ready was third, beaten 25 1/2 lengths, in the off-the-turf, sloppy Wonder Again Stakes (G3) at Saratoga during the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival, a race that both Lee and Doyle said amounted to a paid workout. Planning to scratch when the field diminished to four horses because of the surface change, they decided to run when only two other horses stayed in. The post-time second choice in the Lake Placid, the 3-year-old filly maintained a comfortable lead heading into the stretch, having set early fractions of :24.51 and :49.16. Those fractions helped to calm Doyle's nerves. "I saw them, and I thought she'd have it," he said. "It's a relief (to win). It's not really exciting. We felt she had it all the way, but it's not done (until they hit the wire)."