[Lunsford's a long-shot winner! - Dale Emmons]

A beauty of an upset
Bel Air Beauty is $96.80 winner in Alcibiades
By Maryhean Wall, Lexington Herald-Leader, October 7, 2006

Bel Air Beauty, with Fernando Jara up, beat Untouched Talent at the finish of the Darley Alcibiades

Keeneland's giant leap into the future yesterday, with Polytrack and video tracking, set the pattern for the $96.80 winner of the Darley Alcibiades, Bel Air Beauty.

The upset winner of the Grade II stakes for juvenile fillies also took a giant leap forward from her only other race, a maiden special weights, when she ran second, losing by a head.

Owner W. Bruce Lunsford expressed the hope, after winning, that the daughter of Smart Strike will join the lineup in her next start for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies on racing's championship day, Nov. 4.

But at the same time, Lunsford and trainer Frankie Brothers patted themselves on the back for coming out on the winning side after taking a shot.

"It probably looked like we were stepping up," Brothers admitted after jockey Fernando Jara brought the winner from third at the top of the stretch to wear down the favorite, Untouched Talent, defeating her by three-quarters of a length.

Her Majesty finished third, a nose ahead of Cotton Blossom, in the field of 14.

Lunsford, a Louisville businessman and one-time Commerce Secretary for Kentucky, said he did indeed bet on his filly, despite her long odds.

"I made enough to make up for my losing bets over the years," joked the popular horse owner, whose other top horses have included Madcap Escapade and First Samurai.

But he also said he had not gone into the race confident that Bel Air Beauty would win.

Winning a graded fixture with a promising filly on the fall meet's opening day -- the track's 70th anniversary and its inaugural day of racing on Polytrack -- made the day quite memorable for Lunsford.

"These moments, you box them in your collection of memories, and on a bad day you pull them out," he said.

Typical of the day's races on the brand-new Polytrack surface, the Alcibiades field raced close together through the 11/16 miles, with the lead changing three times.

But the first to the wire, Bel Air Beauty, was hardly the one the crowd of 18,580 had guessed would emerge. With little experience behind her, the winner was tackling fillies who had already been tested much more than her.

Runner-up Untouched Talent, the $2.60 to $1 favorite, had won two small stakes before finishing second in the Del Mar Derby. Cotton Blossom also had won a pair of races, one of them the Schulverville at Saratoga. The Spinaway winner from Saratoga, Appealing Zophie, was another who brought strong credentials to this Alcibiades field.

Brothers, however, knew he had in Bel Air Beauty a filly who has been "very professional from day one.

"Sometimes you take a chance," Brothers said. So they did.

"He's cautious and conservative and I'm a risk-taker," Lunsford said. "If we were both cautious we might not have been here today. But when he didn't resist at this level, I knew we had a shot."

In the co-featured Grade III Sycamore Breeders' Cup, on turf, Garrett Gomez brought the favorite, Revved Up, from third on the far turn to score a two-length win over Rush Bay, followed by Always First.

Gomez said he'd gone into the 11/2-mile race with a huge concern that his next-to-outside post, No. 9, "was going to kill me." When the 8-year-old gray gelding failed to break super-sharply from the outside, the jockey's discouragement only deepened.

Not to worry. On the first turn, thinking the pace made by Lord Carmen to be a bit too slow, Gomez let the old gelding out a notch. Within a quarter-mile he'd moved up from sixth to fourth.

"That was a winning move for us in the first half-mile," Gomez said. Giving the gelding some rein at that point put him in a prime position to take over the lead in the upper stretch.

Last year's Sycamore winner, 10-year-old Rochester, finished eighth after swinging nine wide turning into the stretch.

Speaking about Revved Up, Gomez described the winner as "an old pro."

"I just tried to put him in the right spot, and when we turned for home, I just let him do his job," the jockey said.

"He put in a heck of a performance."