Trainer Chad Brown sent three horses west for Del Mar's turf festival on Thanksgiving weekend, and Segesta made it a clean sweep Nov. 30 as she took the $302,000 Matriarch Stakes (G1T) with ease.
Yet, perhaps the more impressive stat of the weekend was that he swept the grade 1s with a pair of half siblings. Both homebreds out of the Juddmonte mare Antonoe, Ghostzapper's Segesta took the Matriarch one day after her 3-year-old Speightstown half brother, Salamis, won the Hollywood Derby (G1T).
Their victories were certainly different. Salamis came rolling late to get up in the final strides of his race while victory never appeared in doubt from the first jump for Segesta.
Breaking well from the outside, jockey Flavien Prat settled the 4-year-old filly back in fourth as In Our Time went on to take command. With top sprinter Ag Bullet in pursuit as she stretched out to a mile, In Our Time set comfortable fractions of :23.65 and :48.06.
Meanwhile, Prat was purely a statue in the saddle as Segesta coasted along. When he asked the question around the far turn, she swiftly made up ground on the two frontrunners and ran on by as they entered the stretch. In Our Time and Ag Bullet battled honorably to hold their positions in second and third, but Segesta was too much in the stretch.
Hitting the wire in 1:35.60, Segesta won by 2 1/4 lengths and paid $5.40 to win.
The triumph was a seventh in the Matriarch for Brown, putting him one behind his mentor Bobby Frankel's record of eight. Juddmonte extended their record with an eighth win as an owner.
The result was a breakthrough for Segesta, who entered Sunday with two graded wins to her credit with two of her three grade 1 attempts ending with defeat by less than a length. She exited a neck defeat in Keeneland's First Lady Stakes (G1T) in October.
"I think this filly deserved to win this race," Brown's assistant, Jose Hernandez, told FanDuel TV's Joaquin Jaime. "She's been knocking on the door so many times. She traveled in really good condition, trained so well here, and I think deserved to win this race. Just a nice, nice filly."
With her fourth career victory, Segesta has now finished in the top two in eight of 11 lifetime starts, earning $1,190,275.
On the racetrack, Antonoe won the 2017 Just a Game Stakes (G1T) at Belmont Park and was a group 3 winner in France as a 2-year-old. Her 2-year-old Gun Runner filly, Directive, just recorded her first official workout Nov. 24 at Payson Park Training Center.
