When Little Liliana and Kalon finished in a dead-heat for win in Saturday's fifth race at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in Del Mar, Calif., it was a double-dip victory for John Sadler, who trains them both.
Not even the camera could separate Little Liliana, a Joe Turner homebred 3-year-old daughter of Square Eddie ridden by Umberto Rispoli, and Kalon, a 4-year-old Kentucky-bred daughter of Bernardini ridden by Florent Geroux, when they hit the wire in the five-furlong turf sprint for maiden fillies and mares.
It was the second career start for Little Liliana and the seventh for Kalon.
“I've been involved in lots of dead heats, but none with both of them my horses for the win,” Sadler said this morning. “That's really rare. That's like a lunar eclipse or something. I've never seen that.”
The double victory, and another in the opening race on the card from Electric Ride with Joe Bravo aboard, enabled Sadler to leapfrog Phil D'Amato, Bob Baffert, and Mark Glatt from fifth to second in the trainer standings. Peter Miller leads with 20 wins from 113 starters, Sadler has 11 from 68, while D'Amato (13/84), Baffert (13/53), and Glass (13/66) are next.
Sadler, who has three Del Mar training titles on his record, gets credit for four wins in three races from the finale on the Friday program to the fifth-race double.
Bravo notched his second consecutive victory when he guided Doncic home for Sadler in Friday's nightcap and made it three in a row, and back-to-backs for Sadler, in Saturday's opener.
Sadler had no representatives in the second, third or fourth races before doubling up in the fifth. The streak ended when Luvluv finished second in the ninth race, then Flagstaff finished third in the Pat O'Brien Stakes.
“We'll take it,” Sadler said.
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