Sweet Azteca leapt into extremely tough grade 1 company at Santa Anita Park with an elan that bodes well for her future.
Following a 12-length decimation of allowance optional claiming company and with her only stakes attempt a third at the grade 3 level, Sweet Azteca in the March 9 B. Wayne Hughes Beholder Mile Stakes (G1) defeated no less an opponent than five-time graded winner Adare Manor .
Not only was Sweet Azteca moving up in class, she was trying two turns for the first time. Yet owner/breeder Pamela Ziebarth and trainer Michael McCarthy knew she could handle herself against this type of competition.
“She’s come a long way in a short period of time,” McCarthy said.
Ziebarth is very familiar with the family, which she and her late mother, Cecilia Straub-Rubens, have developed for generations. The bottom line traces back to leading California sire Cee’s Tizzy and the broodmare Cee’s Song, both raced by Straub-Rubens. They are not only the sire and dam of Tizsweet, Sweet Azteca’s third dam, but they also produced 2000 Horse of the Year and elite sire Tiznow .
Thus, stamina shouldn’t be difficult for Sweet Azteca, who certainly had no trouble with the Beholder’s mile distance. She broke on top for jockey Flavien Prat and easily went to the front, a position she never relinquished.
Adare Manor, a Bob Baffert trainee making her first start since the 2023 Breeders’ Cup, wasn’t about to make it easy for Sweet Azteca, however. The more experienced 5-year-old mare raced along the rail in fourth for the first part, tipping out to take aim on 4-year-old Sweet Azteca.
Sweet Azteca never let Adare Manor catch her, scoring by three-quarters of a length in 1:36.40 as the 3-1 second choice.
“Around the turn, I tried to get her to relax, and she did the rest herself,” said Prat. “At the turn for home, I felt the other horse coming, and she picked it up herself.”
Adare Manor, favored at 11-10, was easily second best, with a 5 1/2-length margin over third-place Green Up , an eastern invader from the Todd Pletcher barn.
“I thought Flavien was on the fastest horse and was able to take control going into the first turn,” McCarthy said. “It was nice enough that everybody kind of sat right off of her flank and never really put any pressure on her. It seemed like she got into a nice rhythm up the backside. Flavien asked her; she responded.”
Santa Anita this year renamed the Beholder Mile as the B. Wayne Hughes Beholder Mile to honor not only multiple champion Beholder , but also her owner, who died in 2021. A racehorse owner for five decades. Hughes owned Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky. Spendthrift bought Beholder as a yearling at Keeneland, and Beholder earned four Eclipse Awards and won three Breeders’ Cup races.
Beholder also captured the Vanity Mile in 2016, and the next year the Vanity was renamed for Beholder. Ziebarth won the race the year before Beholder with My Sweet Addiction , a homebred daughter of Tiznow.
With Ziebarth’s breeding program, all roads lead back to Tiznow, two-time winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) and a Hall of Famer.
“You look at my papers (of homebreds), and it’s Tiznow here and Tiznow there,” Ziebarth said. “Everything has a little touch of him in it. Even the ones that get retired at the farm that we have in Kentucky—they go, ‘Who’s this one related to?’ and I go, ‘Take a guess.’ Somewhere in there it’s happened.”
Straub-Rubens bred Tizsweet, who started only once. For Ziebarth and Michael Cooper, Tizsweet produced unraced Sweetitiz, Sweet Azteca’s second dam. That led to multiple stakes winner So Sweetitiz , the dam of Sweet Azteca and a daughter of Grand Slam—Sweetitiz bred and raced by Ziebarth.
Ziebarth has watched Sweet Azteca grow up, visiting her several times in Kentucky and getting regular photo updates.
“I went and saw her as a 2-year-old before she came into racing,” Ziebarth said. “I have great pictures of her and my husband feeding her her first peppermints. Her lips are up, and she’s going, ‘I don’t know about this.’ Now I hear she eats them all the time in the barn.”
Winning owner/breeder Pamela Ziebarth hugs jockey Flavien Prat after Sweet Azteca’s victory
Debuting at Churchill Downs last May, Sweet Azteca broke her maiden by 2 1/4 lengths at six furlongs. In her only loss, she finished third in the Jan. 1 Las Flores Stakes (G3) at Santa Anita, followed by the 12-length win Feb. 2.
Sharp Azteca , a multiple graded winner and earner of more than $2 million, is the sire of Sweet Azteca. The 11-year-old son of multiple leading New York sire Freud won the 2017 Cigar Mile Handicap (G1) over Mind Your Biscuits and Practical Joke . Sharp Azteca entered stud at Three Chimneys Farm near Versailles, Ky., and as a freshman sire in 2022 he led by number of winners with 34. He now stands for private treaty in Japan at Shizunai Stallion Station, which is operated by the Japan Bloodhorse Breeders’ Association.
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