Breeders’ Cup Photo ©
NYRA Press Release: Robert E. Masterson’s Champion Turf Mare Tepin is set to depart from trainer Mark Casse’s Churchill Downs base midweek to settle into her summer digs at Saratoga Race Course, according to Norm Casse, the head assistant for his father Mark, on Friday.
The next goal for the 5-year-old superstar remains the Grade 1 Woodbine Mile in Ontario on September 17, although her connections have been cautiously mulling a start at the Spa, where she could possibly take on males in the newly upgraded Grade 1, $500,000 Fourstardave Handicap on August 12, or stay with the female division in the Grade 2, $400,000 Ballston Spa on Travers Day on August 27.
“We’re just going to take it easy with her when she gets there,” said Casse. “[We’ll] let her kind of dictate what’s going on and when we start breezing her, we’ll see where we’re at with her. There’s still an outside chance that she’ll run at Saratoga, either in the Fourstardave or the Ballston Spa, depending on how she’s training. There’s really no timetable.”
Tepin, who is 4-for-4 in graded stakes this year, including last month’s historic victory in the Group 1 Queen Anne at Royal Ascot, suffered her only two defeats in 2015 at the famed “Graveyard of Champions,” with agonizingly close seconds in both the Grade 1 Diana and Ballston Spa last summer.
Also set to join Casse’s Saratoga string this summer is John Oxley’s Sky My Sky, who breezed five furlongs in 1:00 flat on Friday morning at Churchill Downs in preparation for the Grade 2, $200,000 Lake George on opening day. Coming off a sixth-place finish in the Sanibel Island at Gulfstream Park this spring, the 3-year-old Bernardini filly proved an easy winner of a turf allowance at Churchill in her most recent start on June 9.
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