Athena Is Out, Improv Is In Saturday’s $100,000 Grade 3 Groupie Doll Stakes At Ellis Park’s

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Athena is out, so Improv is in Saturday’s $100,000, Grade 3 Groupie Doll Stakes, Ellis Park’s signature race.
Trainer Helen Pitts-Blasi entered Athena in both the mile Groupie Doll and Mountaineer Park’s six-furlong West Virginia Secretary of State Stakes, also worth $100,000 but not graded. 
Athena’s defection allows the Rusty Arnold-trained Improv to draw in off the “also-eligible” list. She will start from the extremely outside.
“You’d rather not be in the 12, but they tell me it’s not that bad a spot going a mile down there,” Arnold said by phone from Saratoga. “She’s got speed from the outside, so that shouldn’t hurt her. Better than being out there on the outside with no speed.”
Improv is the first daughter of One Caroline, a mare Arnold considers “probably the best filly I never had” but whose career was compromised by injuries. After racing twice last year, Improv was off for 13 months with a stress fracture, but returned this March to easily win a Gulfstream Park maiden race. In an allowance race two starts later, she flashed speed but faded so badly – losing by 49 lengths, with Julien Leparoux wrapping up on her in the hopeless cause — that Arnold is simply throwing that race out.
“We thought she’d injured herself,” Arnold said. “Julien said, ‘Hey, she just wasn’t there, and I didn’t press on.’ She came back to the barn, cooled out well, acted well.”
Putting a line through that disaster was a lot easier to do after Improv in her next start led all the way to win a mile allowance race at Churchill Downs.
“She ran the race I thought she should have run the race before,” Arnold said.
“We’ve liked her from Day One. She’s had a few issues that have kept her from putting a string of races together. She’s good right now. I thought her last race was a big improvement and she’s starting to ‘get it.’ It’s time to get aggressive with her, because you don’t know how long they’ll stay around.”
With Improv running, jockey Jon Court moves to that filly, leaving Chicago-based Iowa Distaff winner Innovative Idea in need of a rider. Trainer Eoin Harty said in a text message that he’s going to take a “wait and see approach” before committing to a rider, in case there are other defections.
Back to Athena, Pitts-Blasi said owner Clifford Grum opted for the Mountaineer race because it seemed not as tough, or at least has fewer horses: eight versus the Groupie Doll’s capacity 12.
“It’s pretty salty at Ellis, not that West Virginia is easier, but you’ve got less horses,” Pitts-Blasi said. “We’re 7-2 there and 8-1 at Ellis.”
Pitts-Blasi has agonized over the decision, which might be a good thing. She also agonized over whether to run Athena in Arlington’s Chicago Handicap the same day as Churchill Downs’ Roxelana. She opted to stay in Louisville, and Athena won at 18-1 odds over I’m a Looker, whom she’ll face again at Mountaineer. 
Pitts-Blasi still has a Groupie Doll starter in Academic Break, a close fourth in a contentious July 1 Churchill allowance race whose top four finishers are all in the Ellis stakes: victorious Conquest Curlgirl, Emmajestic and Crown D’ Oro. 
Emmajestic seeking to claim a stakes
Whatever happens, Groupie Doll entrant Emmajestic was a nice claim for $40,000 at Churchill Downs’ 2015 spring meet. Owner Agave Racing Stable and trainer Michelle Lovell won a pair of Churchill Downs’ allowance races last fall before the filly got the winter off.
Emmajestic ran a decent fifth in the mud upon her return at the Fair Grounds — a stakes in which Groupie Doll 4-1 favorite Ahh Chocolate was third. After tiring considerably in a Keeneland allowance race, Emmajestic was off 2 1/2 months before returning to be a closing second in that tough July 1 Churchill allowance. 
“She’s been really good to us, and she’s maturing,” Lovell said. “We’re putting her in a tough spot, but she’s freshened and she ran a nice race in her comeback race. We’re 15-1, but I think she’ll make a good showing.
“You’ve got your clear favorites, your horses in good form. Neil Howard’s horse (Ahh Chocolate) is a really nice filly, proven. But you never know. You’ve got to get in the gates and try ’em. I think we’ve got a chance to get a stakes-placing anyway. Horses don’t show up sometimes, and hopefully we will. I love the filly. She’s doing really well right now. She’s gotten through her (allowance) conditions really well, and this is the next step. It’s a tough race. (But) my filly really likes a mile. I think it’s a perfect distance for us.”
Sophie Doyle, off since fracturing her shoulder and shattering her collarbone in a May 27 spill at Churchill, resumes riding Friday at Ellis. In need of a jockey on a day when many of Ellis’ top riders are out of town, Lovell took the gamble that Doyle would get her doctor’s clearance in time to ride. Entries were taken last Sunday for the Groupie Doll, with Doyle getting medical permission on Tuesday.
Lovell, however, will be at Louisiana Downs, where she’s running Delusional K K in the Louisiana Cup Filly & Mare Sprint. Assistant trainer Leigh Bentley will saddle Emmajestic at Ellis. “Hopefully we’ll get something
done Saturday with both fillies,” Lovell said.
Ellis Park Juvenile developments
Cardinal Sin, winner of a 5 1/2-furlong turf maiden race at Ellis by 5 1/2, is staying at Saratoga and won’t run in Saturday’s $75,000 Ellis Park Juvenile, leaving a field that now will be no more than five 2-year-olds. 
“We entered to kind of get a feel for how the race was going to come up,” said co-owner Harvey Diamond of Skychai Racing. Limited numbers aside, he said, “I think it came up pretty tough, really. There are three or four horses in there that look like they can run. The purse is a little bigger at Saratoga, but what really influenced us is that he’s already up here.”
Cardinal Sin instead will run in a grass allowance race at Saratoga that Diamond hopes serves as a prep for a stakes at Kentucky Downs.
Meanwhile, the short field — which includes the unraced Fairmount Park horse Decaro — encouraged Keeneland-based trainer Ben Colebrook to change his mind and take on the boys with the filly Caroline Test, who captured an off-turf 5 1/2-furlong maiden race at Ellis by 4 1/4 lengths. Colebrook had considered running in Saturday’s $60,000 Colleen on turf against fillies at Monmouth Park.
“I train her for the breeder,” Colebrook said of Edward Seltzer and Beverly Anderson. “Once we can get black type (stakes placing), you can kind of do some other things, run her back in an allowance race at Kentucky Downs. The race at Monmouth came up a little tougher than we were thinking, and you’d have to ship. Here it’s just a local ship — and have her ready for Kentucky Downs — was the thought.”
Caroline Test is from the same female family as Surgical Strike, a multiple stakes-winner on turf and Polytrack whom Colebrook trains for Seltzer and Anderson. “We kind of think she’s going to be better on the grass,” Colebrook said. “But she ran so well on the dirt at Ellis that maybe she is a dirt filly. And she’s run over the track, so there were a couple of things that swayed us to stay home.”
“Making of a Racehorse” fan experience continues Saturday
“Making of a Racehorse,” Ellis Park’s fan experience staged in conjunction with the Kentucky division of the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, will be held every Saturday morning during August. The free event is designed to give racing fans, horse enthusiasts and the simply-curious an up-close look at everything that goes into getting a horse to the races. 
Fans are invited to arrive after 7 a.m. ET in the track southern parking lot by the Ohio River levee, which is in close proximity to the starting gate for morning schooling. The program begins at 7:30 a.m. with Ellis starter Scott Jordan and his crew explaining how horses learn to break from the gate. Participants then go for a backside visit to trainer John Hancock’s barn, with jockey Francisco Torres on hand to answer questions. Ellis announcer Jimmy McNerney and paddock analyst Megan Devine also will add commentary, with fans invited to attend their Saturday morning handicapping show at 9:30 in the clubhouse.
For more information, contact Jennie Rees, Ellis Park publicity, at tracksidejennie@gmail.com. 

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