Straight No Chaser, Sugar Fish return to form at Santa Anita

ARCADIA  – Bouncing back from bad efforts to score stakes victories at Santa Anita on Sunday, two horses vaulted all the way into the Breeders’ Cup conversation.

But that conversation is likely to go quite differently for the handlers of Straight No Chaser, front-running winner of the $200,000, Grade II Santa Anita Sprint Championship Stakes with jockey John Velazquez, and Sugar Fish, come-from-behind winner of the $200,000, Grade II Zenyatta Stakes for fillies and mares with Tyler Baze.

Straight No Chaser, who paid $5 as a narrow second choice to fourth-place finisher Fort Bragg, won the 6-furlong race by 6 1/4 lengths over Roll On Big Joe. The 5-year-old was returning from a 4 1/2-month break following a troubled fourth in a race in New York and a physical problem.

Dozens of Straight No Chaser’s more than 1,000 owners through MyRacehorse were in the Santa Anita winner’s circle after his fifth win in eight starts and first above Grade III.

“I’d obviously love to take a shot at the Breeders’ Cup,” trainer Dan Blacker said, referring to the $1 million, Grade I Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Del Mar on Nov. 2. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed everything goes smooth.”

Sugar Fish ($7.20) and Baze won the 1 1/16-mile Zenyatta by 1 1/2 lengths by rallying along the inner rail to catch pacesetter Alpha Bella, with Desert Dawn, favored Nothing Like You and Che Evasora far back. Sugar Fish came out of a sixth-place finish in Grade I Clement L. Hirsch Stakes at Del Mar, a flop her people shrugged off because she was facing California distaff division leader Adare Manor and she doesn’t seem to like Del Mar.

Sunday, Sugar Fish reverted to her form from her breakthrough victory, in which she overcame a bad stumble at the start to win by nearly 10 lengths in the Grade II Summer Oaks at Santa Anita.

“She can out-finish anything that I’ve seen in the filly department,” said Kim Lloyd, one of the owners of the daughter of Accelerate.

The Zenyatta field was reduced to five when track veterinarians ordered Flying Connection scratched following a PET (positron emission tomography) scan Sunday morning.

Sugar Fish, trained by Jeff Mullins, scored her fourth win in eight starts, her fourth in a row at Santa Anita and her first against older females.

This could tempt Sugar Fish owners Lloyd and Michael Talla to try the $2 million, Grade I Breeders’ Cup Distaff on Nov. 2, but neither man sounded inclined to throw the 3-year-old into that fight.

Crown count

Santa Anita reported impressive attendance and betting figures for the California Crown card on Saturday.

Total wagering handle for the 10-race card was $23.4 million, including $5.5 million from Hong Kong, which is included in some California simulcast pools for the first time this year. That’s a record for a single non-Breeders’ Cup day at a Santa Anita autumn meet.

Without Hong Kong, the total would have been $17.9 million. That would still be a 39.5% increase over the day of the 2023 Awesome Again Stakes (as the California Crown Stakes used to be called) and the biggest non-Breeders’ Cup day at the Santa Anita autumn meet since $18.1 million was bet on the day of the 2016 Awesome Again.

Attendance was 21,812. That’s more than double the crowd of 10,133 at the track for the corresponding day in 2023, and the highest for the day since a crowd of 25,837 watched the 2010 Goodwood Stakes (an earlier name for the Awesome Again and California Crown stakes).

California Crown day was a first-time event  – modeled by Santa Anita operator 1/ST on Pegasus World Cup day at Gulfstream Park near Miami  – designed to attract a younger “Hollywood” crowd by adding live music and food from trendy restaurants to a program of five stakes with purses totaling $2.8 million.

Subsanador and jockey Mike Smith won the $1 million California Crown Stakes in a mild upset.