LBD Stable, Manganaro Bloodstock and David Ingordo's Tarabi (First Samurai) rallied down the center of Saratoga main track and finished strongly to take out Thursday's Wilton S., the first race contested out of the reconstructed Wilson Chute at Saratoga.
Off as the 6-5 chalk, the $240,000 Keeneland September graduate was content to lay second through the early exchanges as Angitude (Violence), a bit reticent to load, showed the way in her first attempt at a distance of ground. Tarabi began to zero in on the front-runner as the field approached the stretch, grabbed that one with about a furlong to travel and prevailed by three-quarters of a length. Goddess of Fire (Mineshaft) finished with interest at the rail to complete a chalky exacta ahead of Angitude in third.
A full-sister to Shivaji, a Group 3-winning and Group 1-placed turf sprinter and $2.1-million earner on the ultra-competitive Japan Racing Association circuit, Tarabi earned a lofty 79 Beyer in decimating a group of Ellis Park maidens at first asking last August, then ran into 'TDN Rising Star' and eventual champion Echo Zulu (Gun Runner) in her next two, finishing runner-up in this track's GI Spinaway S. and again in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies. The chestnut tuned up for this return to stakes company with a sound runner-up effort in a seven-furlong allowance over the Churchill main track June 18.
A 35th black-type winner for Claiborne's underrated First Samurai, Tarabi is out of an unraced daughter of Grade II winner Buy the Barrel, also the dam of MSP Stave (Ghostzapper) and English MGSP Mise En Rose (War Front). The winner's 2-year-old half-brother Gunner Bay (Gun Runner) was purchased by Robert and Lawana Low for $250,000 out of last year's Keeneland September Sale, and Indian Bay is also responsible for a yearling Kantharos filly. The mare was most recently covered by Authentic.
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