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Fionn, with Flavien Prat up, edges Candy Quest to win the $2 million Blackwood Dueling Grounds Oaks (G3) on Wednesday at Kentucky Downs in Franklin. (COADY MEDIA)<\/p>\nFionn takes G3 Dueling Grounds Oaks to cap Cox\u2019s title<\/p>\n
Published 9:35 pm Wednesday, September 10, 2025<\/p>\n
Fionn, with Flavien Prat up, edges Candy Quest to win the $2 million Blackwood Dueling Grounds Oaks (G3) on Wednesday at Kentucky Downs in Franklin. (COADY MEDIA)<\/p>\n
FRANKLIN \u2013\u00a0With another narrow score Wednesday at Kentucky Downs, Fionn further strengthened her widening reputation as a win machine.<\/p>\n
Cousins George Messina and Michael Lee\u2019s feisty filly edged Candy Quest by a half-length in the $2 million Blackwood Dueling Grounds Oaks Invitational (G3). It was the third-straight graded stakes victory and sixth first-place finish in eight starts for the daughter of Twirling Candy trained by Brad Cox. That\u2019s an eye-popping .750 win percentage and a perfect in-the-money percentage of 1.000 from a $75,000 yearling. The top prize in the Dueling Grounds Oaks on the final day of the track\u2019s seven-day meet pushed her career earnings to $1,779,170.<\/p>\n
Messina and Lee\u2019s tiny stable completed the Kentucky Downs season with a 3-for-3 record. Their 4-year-old filly Stellify won twice, an allowance on Aug. 28 and the $2 million Light & Wonder Ladies Turf Marathon (G3) on Saturday. Stellify and Fionn are a combined 10-2-2 from a total of 14 starts in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a two-horse stable like Mike and I have, we have two fillies here and won both races ($2 million stakes),\u201d said Messina, who lives in New Orleans. \u201cThe odds have got to be astronomical. We know we\u2019re blessed. We know it doesn\u2019t happen often. It\u2019s a once-in-a-lifetime deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though plans are not solidified, the stablemates may both run in the Breeders\u2019 Cup Filly and Mare Turf on Nov 1 at Del Mar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re on top of the world,\u201d said Lee, who is from Spanish Fort, Alabama, near Mobile. \u201cWe have our family here with us today. We were thinking of people who came before us and put us in this place. I wouldn\u2019t be in horse racing if it wasn\u2019t for my relatives that came before me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fionn\u2019s victory clinched Cox\u2019s first training title at Kentucky Downs.<\/p>\n
Following wins in the G3 Regret and the G1 Belmont Oaks Invitational, Fionn was the 2-1 morning line favorite in the full field of 12 for the 1 5\/16th\u00a0miles Dueling Grounds Oaks and she ended up as the 2-1 second choice in the wagering. Her Cox stablemate Destino D\u2019Oro went off as the 4-5 favorite after a pair of wins this summer, including the Pucker Up (G3) at Ellis Park, but encountered some traffic trouble and wound up sixth.<\/p>\n
Running Away led the way early, turning in split times of :24.26 and :48.12.<\/p>\n
Following her established form, Fionn sat well off the pace under Flavien Prat and made a determined run through the stretch to snag the victory. Though Fionn was several paths away from the rail entering the stretch, Glessman Racing\u2019s Candy Quest, sent off at 16-1, was wider still when she launched her sprint toward the front. Fionn, just to her inside, also moved, and the pair sped past everyone else, turning it into a two-horse contest.<\/p>\n
Candy Quest had a slight edge at the eighth pole, but Fionn gained an advantage by the sixteenth pole and managed to extend it in the final 100 yards. Totally Justified was third. Fionn hit the wire in 2:05.52 and paid $6.92 to win.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the 12 (Candy Quest) came by us, I thought we were done,\u201d Messina said. \u201cFionn, she\u2019s got the heart of a champion. You don\u2019t see what a heart looks like inside of a horse until they\u2019re out on the track and proving it. She proved it today. I don\u2019t know what else she\u2019s got to do. If you ask me, she\u2019s the best 3-year-old filly on the turf in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cox praised Fionn, noting that she won despite being pushed out of her comfort zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe dug in, obviously was headed there,\u201d Cox said. \u201cShe\u2019s normally running horses down on the outside but had to dig in from the inside today. She\u2019s tough. A very nice filly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prat said he reacted to the conditions he was facing but wasn\u2019t sure if Fionn was up to the challenge presented by Candy Quest.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe ran a great race,\u201d Prat said. \u201cThe horse in front of me wasn\u2019t going well, so I moved early and thought she needed to get going. The horse outside came and got the jump on us, was honestly moving much better than us at the quarter pole. She just fought back. Inside the eighth pole, I felt like she fought back and had a chance. But at the quarter pole I thought I was going to run second.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Cox said he wondered how Fionn would handle having to contend with pressure from Candy Quest on her right flank.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw her coming down the outside. I was obviously watching Destino d\u2019Oro as well,\u201d Cox said. \u201cShe had a little bit of a bottled-up trip. When it didn\u2019t look like she was going to get through there, when they straightened up, I started watching Fionn.\u00a0Mr. (Karl) Glassman\u2019s filly (Candy Quest) made the lead, and I didn\u2019t know how she would respond. But you could tell she wasn\u2019t giving in, and she stayed on well. You could tell she was battling back. It was a little bit of the unknown with the distance today. She\u2019s obviously won a Grade 1 at Saratoga, but this is the farthest she\u2019s been and she responded well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cox credited his team with developing Fionn into a top-class runner.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrace Messina is an assistant for us; his father owns the horse with his cousin, Michael Lee,\u201d Cox said. \u201cBlake, my son, had her up at Saratoga and did a good job prepping her for this. It really worked out. Very proud of her. She\u2019s come a long way. She\u2019s been a little challenging since we picked her up last year, but she\u2019s definitely making it worthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cox explained that the filly has a tendency to get revved up, as she clearly was in the paddock prior to the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s just a little difficult to handle,\u201d Cox said. \u201cYou can set her off if you don\u2019t have the right people handling her. All of our grooms have done a good job handling her, our whole team. Very excited about what she was able to do today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Messina and Lee have really cashed in at Kentucky Downs, and Cox joked about them reinvesting in some more bloodstock.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable. They\u2019re good people and good things happen to good people,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re awesome people. Look, the Keeneland sale is going on, so I\u2019m hoping they can expand that stable over the next week or so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The G1 Queen Elizabeth II at Keeneland could be Fionn\u2019s next stop, Cox said, or he might train her up to the Breeders\u2019 Cup.<\/p>\n
Lee mixed breeding and a famous geographic site in Northern Ireland to come up with a name for the filly, who is out of the Giant\u2019s Causeway mare Gaelic Gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer grandfather is Giant\u2019s Causeway, and Giant\u2019s Causeway is a legend in Ireland,\u201d Lee said. \u201cThe giant who built the causeway between Ireland and Scotland is named Fionn. She was named for a giant, and she is a giant.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fionn takes G3 Dueling Grounds Oaks to cap Cox\u2019s title Published 9:35 pm Wednesday, September 10, 2025 By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-128987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}