Leslie's Rose Triumphs on Fast Track in Shuvee

Back on a fast track in the $200,000 Shuvee Stakes (G2), Whisper Hill Farm's Leslie's Rose returned to the form that brought her her first graded stakes win, notching her second by 3 3/4 lengths at Saratoga Race Course July 18. The 4-year-old Leslie's Rose made it quite clear in last year's Kentucky Oaks (G1) and this year's Ogden Phipps Stakes (G1) that she wanted nothing to do with a sloppy track. With rain hitting Saratoga nearly every day of this year's summer meeting, owner Mandy Pope and her racing manager and farm trainer Todd Quast had turned their eyes heavenward, hoping to get their Into Mischief filly back to the winner's circle. "We've been praying," Pope said after the race. "She has said twice 'no' (to an off track), so we had to listen, and the gods listened, and we got the weather, and she did what she knows how to do." Under jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., Leslie's Rose broke from post 3 and headed straight to the rail, tracking the pacesetting Dazzling Move while odds-on favorite Raging Sea, winner of this race last year, settled at the rear of the seven-horse field. While Raging Sea began to make up ground heading into the final turn, Ortiz steered Leslie's Rose between the leader and Gun Song, pulling away from the latter to make steady progress on Dazzling Move, then drew away inside the sixteenth pole to win in a final time of 1:50.77. Dazzling Move held on for second followed by Raging Sea another 9 3/4 lengths back in third. The Todd Pletcher trainee was cross-entered in the Molly Pitcher Stakes (G3) July 19 at Monmouth Park, and Pope said that she would have definitely scratched her filly if the Saratoga track had come up wet. Quast added, "Todd told us that he's never seen a horse that can go well on the dry, even training in the morning, and do so bad in the mud." Working with Quast, Pope purchased the bay filly for $1.15 million at the 2022 Keeneland September Yearling Sale out of the Glennwood Farm consignment. "She was very athletic," Quast said. "The right pedigree, the right look. The way she walked and the way she moved. Mandy goes through the pedigrees and we look at them together, and we just said 'Wow, she looks like a racehorse.'" Leslie's Rose was bred in Kentucky by John D. Gunther and Eurowest Bloodstock Services. She's out of the unraced Galileo mare Wildwood Rose, who is a half sibling to grade 1 winner Materiality and grade 2 winner My Miss Sophia. Leslie's Rose is expected to start next in the Personal Ensign Stakes (G1) at Saratoga Aug. 23. "This was a prep for that race either way," Quast said, "but she exceeded our expectations." Leslie's Rose is the 10th graded stakes winner this year for Into Mischief. The six-time leading sire has already been represented this season by dual classic winner Sovereignty, Florida Derby (G1) winner Tappan Street, and Woody Stephens Stakes (G1) winner Patch Adams. Into Mischief stood the 2025 season for $250,000 at Spendthrift Farm near Lexington.