Top-class filly, and Form Bloodstock purchase, Laurelin made it five wins from five starts when she won the G2 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Oaks Invitational Stakes at Saratoga on Saturday. Laurelin has started her career a perfect 4-for-4 for trainer Graham Motion, sweeping victories in a trio of stakes on firm, good, and yielding ground. In her most recent effort, the June 27 Penn Oaks at Penn National Race Course, she stalked off the pace and pounced late for a 1 1/4-length victory.
In Saturday’s G2 feature, Carmouche kept his filly in the clear as she chased fractions of :23.48, :47.60, and 1:11.52. Carmouche approached the leaders outside the quarter pole and always looked like they were traveling best down the lane. Separating herself from her foes in the final sixteenth, she finished 1 3/4 lengths clear of Evershed, as Opulent Restraint held third.
“This is a grade 1 horse,” the 3-year-old filly’s satisfied rider, Kendrick Carmouche, declared in the winner’s circle. “You can feel the confidence and the relaxedness in this horse. … She just keeps getting better.”
The three-year-old was purchased by Form Bloodstock for 160,000 euros at the 2023 Goffs Orby Book 1 Sale.
A daughter of Dubawi’s increasingly successful son Zarak, Laurelin is out of the winning Cape Cross mare Bari.
The latter is a half-sister to G2 Doncaster Cup winner Thomas Hobson as well as to the stakes winner Brindisi, the granddam of dual G1 winner Dreamloper.
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