DEL MAR \u2014 Segesta capped an eventful closing day at Del Mar Sunday by winning the Grade I Matriarch, giving East Coast trainer Chad Brown three wins in three starts during the season-ending, two-day Turf Festival.<\/p>\n
But the trainer and 4-year-old daughter of Ghostzapper were far from the only winners as the challenging 12th\u00a0fall meeting ended under sunny skies.<\/p>\n
-Umberto Rispoli (jockey) and George Papaprodromou (trainer) each claimed their first Del Mar titles by teaming for a win in the same race. Rispoli rode the Papaprodromou prepared My Kat ($7.20) to victory in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Rispoli finished with 17 wins, three more than runnerup Antonio Fresu. Mirco Demuro finished third with 12 wins on just 49 rides. Papaprodromou had 11 wins to nine for John Sadler and eight apiece for Doug O\u2019Neill and Bob Baffert, who won the last two races of the meeting.<\/p>\n
The early Pick 5 pool reached $3,004,468 \u2013 the carryover of $329,733 from Saturday plus $2,674,735 wagered Sunday \u2013 with 650 winning tickets each earning $4,046.30 on the 1-7-4-3-9 combination.<\/p>\n
Brown swept the weekend\u2019s two $300,000 Grade I stakes with Segesta\u2019s win following Salamis\u2019 victory in Saturday\u2019s Hollywood Derby. For good measure, the Brown-trained Just Aloof also won the Grade III Jimmy Durante Saturday<\/p>\n
Segesta\u2019s dominating victory under Flavien Prat as the 8-5 favorite gave Brown seven wins in the last nine Matriarchs and his fourth sweep (2018, 2020, 2023, 2025) of the two Grade Is of the Turf Festival.<\/p>\n
Prat took Segesta three wide on the far turn and was in control as the field turned for home. Segesta finished 21\/4 lengths ahead of long shot In Our Time with second-favorite Ag Bullet another three-quarters of a length back in third.<\/p>\n
\u201cChad thought she might be a Grade I winner,\u201d Prat said of Segesta. \u201cShe was there every step of the way. I don\u2019t think the pace was crazy and there were two horses in front. So I came out. She gave me a first-class trip.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSegesta deserved to win this race,\u201d said Brown assistant Jose Hernandez. \u201cShe\u2019s been knocking on the door so many times. And she trained well here. Prat got her in good position and Chad is really good with grass horses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now comes the difficult part for Brown and the other trainers who shipped horses in from the East Coast for the Turf Festival. The MD-11s that flew the horses to Southern California have all been grounded by the FAA since that flight last Monday for inspections and repairs. The horses will be vanned to their home bases in Kentucky and New York.<\/p>\n
The results of Sunday\u2019s three $100,000 stakes:<\/p>\n
Cecil B. DeMille (Grade III, 1-mile turf, 2-year-olds): Unrivaled Time ($13) split horses in the final strides under Diego Herrera to win, finishing three-quarters of a length ahead of Iriseach with 1-2 favorite Hey Nay Nay (the winner of September\u2019s Del Mar Juvenile Turf) another neck back in third. Said Herrera: \u201cThe sky\u2019s the limit for him. He just kept showing signs of improvement over the summer. He showed a lot of maturing today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stormy Liberal (5 furlongs turf, older horses): Rispoli rallied the 6-year-old gelding Unconquerable Keen ($21.60) to a third straight victory in the Turf Festival sprint. The Phil D\u2019Amato-trained winner now has four wins in eight Del Mar starts, three coming in the Stormy Liberal. Unconquerable Keen was eighth at the top of the stretch and finished a neck ahead of Zio Jo (Fresu), who was a head up on Sorrento Sky. Favorite Yellow Card finished fifth. Said Rispoli: \u201cHe gets a lot of encouragement when he is behind horses. That\u2019s the way he finishes strong. We won last year coming back like we did today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bayakoa (Grade III, 1-mile dirt, older horses): Hope Road, the 2-5 favorite, scored a 6\u00bd-length win over Simply Joking for jockey Juan Hernandez and Baffert. Said Hernandez: \u201cShe broke running. And she was relaxed and tracking the horses in front just waiting for me to shake the reins. We had a great trip.\u201d<\/p>\n
Del Mar\u2019s fall meeting opened on the highest of notes as the track hosted the Breeders\u2019 Cup for the second straight year and for the fourth time in nine years.<\/p>\n
But after that, there were two rainouts (Nov. 15 and 21) and an unprecedented Monday makeup day. A day of racing on the turf and several days of training were also eliminated, although only a total of six races were lost to the weather. The two cancellations equaled the previous total for Del Mar\u2019s 85-year history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was the first meet where multiple weeks were impacted by the weather that I can remember,\u201d said racing secretary David Jerkens.<\/p>\n
Notable<\/p>\n
There were a pair of notable firsts at Del Mar Friday. Former Richard Mandella assistant Angel Vega scored his first career win with Sexy Blue ($4.80) in the fourth. And jockey Cesar Belmont scored his first win in the U.S. on just his second ride in the country with Sendit Mo ($7.60) in the sixth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DEL MAR \u2014 Segesta capped an eventful closing day at Del Mar Sunday by winning the Grade I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[8506,181,74,76,75,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-76342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-horse-racing","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}