St. George Stable's front-running Letruska lived up to her odds-on favoritism in Sunday's $300,000, Grade 3 Houston Ladies Classic Stakes at Sam Houston Race Park in Houston, Texas, fighting off a pesky Motion Emotion, then drawing away to win the ninth running of the filly and mare fixture by 2 1/2 lengths under jockey Jesus Castanon.
MIke Maker-trained Ujjayi finished second, with 2020 Houston Ladies Classic winner Lady Apple four lengths farther back in third and Tom Amoss-trained Figure It Out fourth. Motion Emotion, who like Lady Apple is trained by Steve Asmussen, finished fifth after making a bold mid-race move to pressure the eventual winner. Ken McPeek-trained Jeweled Princess finished sixth and Scott Geiner-trained Shes Our Fastest rounded out the field of seven.
Trained by Fausto Gutierrez, who brought the 5-year-old Kentucky-bred mare to the United States from Mexico City near the end of the 2019 racing season after winning all six of her races there, Letruska covered 1 1/16 miles on a fast track in 1:45.02 after setting fractions of :23.66, :48.56, 1:12.99 and 1:38.42. She paid $2.80 as the 2-5 favorite and was winning for the 12th time in 16 career starts. Six of those wins have come in the U.S., including two other graded stakes: the G3 Shuvee at Saratoga last August and the G3 Rampart at Gulfstream Park in her last start on Dec. 12.
The Houston Ladies Classic was one of six stakes – two of them graded – with over $1 million in purses offered on Sunday's Houston Racing Festival program that saw wagering total $5,342,599.
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