By Joe Bianca
After trading decisions with four-time champion Beholder (Henny Hughes) in four starts last season, 2015's Eclipse-winning sophomore filly Stellar Wind (Curlin) will look to take an early stranglehold on the older mare division when she makes her 5-year-old debut in the GI Apple Blossom H. Friday at Oaklawn.
Hronis Racing purchased the chestnut from Barbara Houck and the Donald Barr barn out of an 8 3/4-length graduation at Laurel in December 2014. She cruised in the GI Santa Anita Oaks the following spring, captured three other graded events that season and was a neck second in the GI Longines Breeders' Cup Distaff to earn champion 3-year-old filly honors. Second to Beholder in the Vanity Mile S. in her 4-year-old bow June 4, she bettered that rival in the GI Clement L. Hirsch S. and GI Zenyatta S. before running fourth behind her in the Distaff.
“We gave her a vacation after the Breeders' Cup, and with Southern California having such a wet January and February, we were going to be pressed to have her ready for the [Mar. 18 GI] Santa Margarita,” trainer John Sadler told the Oaklawn notes team. “The Apple Blossom is such a classic and prestigious race too.”
With Beholder enjoying a well-deserved retirement and a dearth of older filly/mare stars out there, the division likely will go through Stellar Wind in 2017, but to assert herself, she must first conquer the Apple Blossom with no previous experience over the Hot Springs surface.
Home field advantage decidedly belongs to Stellar Wind's chief competition, Stonestreet Stables' Terra Promessa (Curlin). The bay 4-year-old went three-for-three at Oaklawn last winter and spring, including victories in the GIII Honeybee S. and GIII Fantasy S. She added tallies in the local Pippin S. and GIII Bayakoa S. this term before being taken out of her game when wrangled off the pace to run a troubled fifth in the GII Azeri S. Mar. 18. With a rail draw and no other clear speed signed on, Terra Promessa figures to be back in her preferred front-running position in the Apple Blossom.
Streamline (Straight Line), who upset Terra Promessa in the Azeri, has her work cut out for her to topple the big two, but the Illinois-bred did run a career-high when second at almost 20-1 in the Apple Blossom last spring.
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