Trainer Gary Contessa was still watching replays on Friday morning of Lee Pokoik's Becky's Joker, who launched what appears to be a promising career with a debut victory in the Grade 3, $175,000 Schuylerville on Opening Day at Saratoga Race Course.
Becky's Joker, a daughter of third-crop sire Practical Joke, entered the six-furlong Schuylerville off nothing more than a Saratoga work tab, breezing a sharp three furlongs in 34.88 seconds over the main track en route to Thursday's score.
Despite breaking slow, she recovered quickly and was a close fourth by the first point of call before splitting foes in upper stretch to draw away to a 3 1/4-length score to spring a 21-1 upset as the second longest shot in the seven-horse field. The effort garnered a 75 Beyer Speed Figure.
The sizable bay stands 16.3 hands high and, “towers over everybody” in the barn according to Contessa, who confirmed the filly for the seven-furlong Grade 1, $300,000 Spinaway on September 3 at the Spa.
“She came back sound and they tell me she looked great this morning,” said Contessa, who was catching a flight to Nashville to watch his son's baseball tournament. “She honestly can only get better. She's got a lot more left in the tank, so we're looking forward to seeing what she can come up with next. As big as she is, and as big as her stride is, she's going to get better as the distances stretch out. I think seven-eighths is going to hit her right between the eyeballs in the Spinaway.”
Contessa commented on the soundness and the good mind of his newly minted graded stakes winner.
“Knock on wood, she's been very, very sound and very healthy. Everything has gone our way so far, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that it continues,” Contessa said. “She's trained as well as any horse I've ever had as a 2-year-old. No matter what you ask her to do, she's push button and picks it up to another gear. Her mind is so good. She had it figured out and she's really a smart filly.”
Contessa's last graded stakes victory before the Schuylerville took place with Pokoik's Sippican Harbor, who pulled a 16-1 upset in the 2018 Grade 1 Spinaway.
Both Becky's Joker and Sippican Harbor were initially slated to be pinhooked before their racing careers, but ended up not being sold at public auction.
“With Lee Pokoik, we have a program where we buy well-bred fillies as weanlings and then we try to resell them as yearlings. This year, we sold an American Pharoah filly that we paid $200,000 for and sold her for $475,000. We sell them for profit, but they don't all get sold,” Contessa said. “We bought her and Sippican Harbor, tried to resell them. We just couldn't get them sold. Then, I won a Grade 1 with Sippican Harbor. I only get them to train if we don't get them sold. That's the game plan, but so far it's been very successful with the ones that we haven't been able to sell. They've turned out to be some of our best ones.”
For the past couple of years, Contessa has worked as private trainer and general manager for Nick Beaver's Belle Gable Stable.
“I had a two-year contract and I sat down with Nick and I told him that we could reduce our overhead by 25-35 percent if we just gave his horses to a public trainer and that's what we did. We gave his horses to Rick Sillaman, who has a public stable at Laurel and Delaware,” Contessa said. “A bunch of my owners asked me if I would come back and train their young horses, which is really my specialty.”
One can expect Contessa, who has 10 stalls on Saratoga's Oklahoma backstretch, to unleash more promising young talent throughout the meet.
“All these babies are ready to run, so we're going to have a real presence,” Contessa said. “This was a great win to start with and we have even more pretty nice horses awaiting their turn.”
Contessa added that he could have stalls at Belmont Park later this year.
“I'm sure I will, but I'm going to stay at Saratoga until the very end,” Contessa said.
Bred in Kentucky by Warren J. Harang, Becky's Joker is out of the Elusive Quality mare Becky's Best – a half-sister to graded stakes winner Vertical Oak- the dam of graded stakes-placed sophomore Giant Mischief.
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