OK­LA­HOMA CITY, Unit­ed States – Bar­ba­di­an train­er Saffie Joseph Jr won his first ever added-mon­ey race at Rem­ing­ton Park when his 7-1 chance Hon­or D La­dy pulled off an up­set to win the US$200 000 Grade 3 Rem­ing­ton Park Oaks.

Go­ing a mile and six­teenth for the three-year-old fil­lies on Sun­day, Hon­or D La­dy pro­duced a de­ter­mined stretch dri­ve un­der Tyler Con­ner, to reach the wire 2-1/2 lengths clear in a time of one minute, 44:69 sec­onds.

Pace­set­ter An­cient Peace ran sec­ond af­ter giv­ing way late in the stretch while 8-1 choice Mag­ic Bub­bles fin­ished third.

The re­sult was the sec­ond added-mon­ey tri­umph for Hon­or D La­dy fol­low­ing her suc­cess in the US$75 000 Hon­ey Rid­er last May, and her third win in eight ca­reer starts.

“I didn’t know any­thing about her,” Con­nor said. “But a cou­ple of hours [be­fore the race] I talked to [ Joseph) and he just told me to keep her face clean; she didn’t like dirt kicked back at her.”

As a re­sult, Con­nor as­sumed a stalk­ing po­si­tion in third with the dark bay fil­ly as 2-1 bet An­cient Peace pulled the field through splits of 23:49, 47:21 and 1:11.77, with favourite Mer­laz­za go­ing well in sec­ond.

Lit­tle changed through­out the con­test and it meant once the race swung for home, Hon­or D La­dy re­mained in con­tention.

By then Mag­ic Bub­bles had en­tered the fray but proved no threat in the end, Hon­or D La­dy and An­cient Peace en­gag­ing in a heat­ed du­el un­til the lat­ter sur­ren­dered deep in the stretch.

CMC