Watsdachances avenged her narrow loss last year at Pimlico with a victory in this year’s edition of the Grade 3, $150,000 Gallorette Handicap Saturday afternoon.
Jockey Javier Castellano, who rode several stakes winners Friday at Pimlico, guided Watsdachances to victory. It was the Chad Brown trainee’s first win in more than a year. The 5-year-old mare is owned by Michael Kisber, Bradley Thoroughbreds and Nelson McMakin.
Coming from well out of it, Watsdachances launched an outside bid at the top of the stretch to surge past horses and win by a length. Emotional Kitten was second, a length and a quarter ahead of Sistas Stroll in third. Final time for the mile and a sixteenth turf event was 1:40.79.
Watsdachances was bred in Ireland by P G Lyons and is by Diamond Green out of High Finance (Entrepeneur).
Gallorette Handicap quotes
Winning co-owner John Batter of Bradley Thoroughbreds (Watsdachances): “She’s a horse that always gives her all. Coming in we didn’t think there was a lot of speed. We wanted to be a little closer today. She’s usually a deep closer. Coming home, we let her run and she did it for us. She came in training really well and we were confident in her ability to run in this race.”
Winning jockey Javier Castellano (Watsdachances): “I was kind of worried a little bit. Hard Not to Like, she scratched. I didn’t see much speed in the race. Usually my horse comes from behind. I don’t want to change anything. She hadn’t run for eight months. She put me in a good spot in the race. I didn’t want to be too far back or too close to the pace. I think I put her in a good spot in the middle to give me a good run and she did. She did excellent today and she galloped out beautiful.”
– Paulick Report
