Shahroze Rallies From Last for Singspiel Victory
A winner by only a neck last time out at Belmont Park, the result was clear as day for Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Head of Plains Partners’ Shahroze in his stakes debut June 23 at Woodbine.
Last in the final turn of the $125,000 Singspiel Stakes (G3T) under jockey Alan Garcia, the Graham Motion-trained son of Holy Roman Emperor got to the outside in the stretch and surged by the field to win the 1 1/2-mile grass race by two lengths.
His burst in the stretch was so rapid, he came within five hundredths of a second of the course record—set by Raintrap in 1994—in a final time of 2:25.65.
Final Copy set the pace and put up fractions of :25.33, :50.33, 1:14.07, and 1:38.03 through a mile, and he held a one-length advantage at that point. Last of eight with a mile to run, and 5 1/4 lengths off the leader, Shahroze began his advance in the final turn and swung out five wide to set up his charge to the wire.
“Today he was very impressive,” Garcia said. “He broke well and then was squished out of there, and then was last and saved all the ground. When we came turning for home, I said, ‘Let me go wide, because I have plenty of horse,’ and then he did his job.
“I wanted to be a little closer to the pace today, but he got that problem in the break. After that, turning for home I let him run, and he kicked away from everybody.”