Lady Eli, Three Other Grade 1 Winners Top Saturday’s Coolmore Jenny Wiley

By Amy Owens —-

Lady Eli; NYRA PHOTOS

LEXINGTON, KY (April 12, 2017) – Sheep Pond Partner’s brilliant mare Lady Eli will make her 2017 debut Saturday when she headlines a field of eight fillies and mares entered for Saturday’s 29th running of the $350,000 Coolmore Jenny Wiley (G1).

Run at 1 1/16 miles on the turf, the Coolmore Jenny Wiley will go as the 10th race on Saturday’s 11-race program with a 6:12 p.m. ET post time. First post time Saturday is 1:05 p.m.

Trained by Chad Brown, the 5-year-old Lady Eli will be making her first start since a nose defeat in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf (G1) at Santa Anita in November. The daughter of Divine Park has compiled a record of 9-7-2-0 with Grade 1 victories coming each year that she has competed.

Lady Eli missed nearly 14 months of racing as she battled back from laminitis to returned to competition last August with a runner-up finish in the Ballston Spa (G2) at Saratoga and a victory in the Flower Bowl Invitational (G1) prior to the Breeders’ Cup.

Irad Ortiz Jr. has the mount on Lady Eli and will break from post position one. In her lone Keeneland start, Lady Eli won the Appalachian (G3) in 2015 to kick off her 3-year-old campaign.

Included in the field are three other Grade 1 winners: Catch a Glimpse, Time and Motion and Illuminant.

Gary Barber, Michael James Ambler and Wildways Farm’s Catch a Glimpse won the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1) here and took the Belmont Oaks Invitational (G1) as one of her five graded stakes victories last year.

Trained by Mark Casse, Catch a Glimpse will be ridden by Florent Geroux and break from post position three.

The Phillips Racing Partnership’s homebred Time and Motion will be making her first start since finishing sixth in the Matriarch (G1) at Del Mar in December. Prior to that, Time and Motion won the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup (G1) Presented by Lane’s End here.

Trained by James Toner, Time and Motion will break from post position six and be ridden by John Velazquez.

Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners Illuminant, winner of the Grade 1 Gamely last May at Santa Anita, finished third in the 2016 Coolmore Jenny Wiley behind champion Tepin.

Trained by Mike McCarthy, Illuminant will be ridden by Flavien Prat and break from post position seven.

The field for the Coolmore Jenny Wiley, from the inside, is: Lady Eli (Ortiz Jr., 123 pounds), Goodyearforroses (IRE) (Corey Nakatani, 120), Catch a Glimpse (Geroux, 118), Dickinson (Paco Lopez, 120), Kitten’s Roar (Joel Rosario, 118), Time and Motion (Velazquez, 123), Illuminant (Prat, 118) and Quidura (GB) (Junior Alvarado, 118).
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For more than 80 years, the Keeneland Association has devoted itself to the health and vibrancy of the Thoroughbred industry. As the world’s largest Thoroughbred auction company, Keeneland conducts sales every January, September and November. Its sales graduates dominate racing across the globe at every level. In April and October, Keeneland offers some of the highest caliber and richest Thoroughbred racing in the world. In 2015, Keeneland hosted the Breeders’ Cup World Championships. Uniquely structured, Keeneland is a private, for-profit corporation that returns its earnings to the industry and the community in the form of higher purses, and it has donated millions of dollars in charitable contributions for education, research and health and human services throughout Central Kentucky. To learn more about Keeneland, visit Keeneland.com.