Kentucky Derby-winning trainer H.
Graham Motion made a one-day, in-and-out appearance at Del Mar to saddle Smart
Bid to a fourth-place finish in the Eddie Read Stakes on Saturday, July 23.
One month later the conditioner of
Animal Kingdom will be back again to send out Summer Soiree in Saturday’s
$250,000 Grade I Del Mar Oaks, a 1 1/8-mile turf run which has drawn a capacity
field of 10 and three also-eligibles.
“This time I think Graham’s bringing
his family and is going to stay for more than one day,” said trainer Gary
Mandella, a friend of Motion’s and the one who oversaw the arrivals and
acclimation processes for both Smart Bid and Summer Soiree. The daughter of War
Front out of the Mazel Trick mare Mazel Tov arrived Wednesday night and made
her first trip to the track at 9 a.m. Thursday.
Summer Soiree produced a 9-3/4
length win on dirt at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas in January and a 10-3/4
length win on Polytrack at Turfway Park in Kentucky in the
Bourbonette in March. At which point, Team Valor International, for
whom Motion trains Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom, purchased Summer
Soiree for what turned out to be an unproductive run on dirt in the Kentucky
Oaks (10th of 13) in which she was bumped at the start.
Switched to turf for the first time,
Summer Soiree blew away eight rivals with an 8 ½-length victory in the Boiling
Springs at Monmouth Park on June 25 and has been training in New Jersey prior
to shipping to Del Mar.
“I think anytime they win like that
on the Polytrack your mindset, to me, leads to turf,” Motion said on a
teleconference this week.
”This (Del Mar Oaks) is something
that Barry (Irwin of Team Valor International) and I pretty much talked
about right after the Boiling Springs. I think the fact that it’s a Grade I is
very appealing, I think the fact that it’s firm turf is also very appealing. So
this is just a race that we had on our radar kind of as soon as she won on the
grass that day.”
The Eddie Read try with Smart Bid
didn’t work out as hoped. And Summer Soiree has been described as a
“temperamental” filly. But Motion was not put off by making the east-to-west
ship once again.
“There’s
always a degree of concern when you have a temperamental filly because whether
it’s California or Canada or Kentucky just because anytime you take them out of
their normal routine it gets a little tougher,” Motion said. “For me
personally, I don’t find that the cross country trip is all that big a deal.
It’s so convenient now with the flights that I really don’t find it to be any
different really than if we were to put them on a van and go to Churchill or
Lexington. So from that point of view it’s very straight forward.”