Races to easy 8 3/4-length victory
The answer was instantaneous when trainer Donnie Von Hemel was asked if Saturday’s Grade III $200,000 Sixty Sails Handicap was the best race of She’s All In’s 23-race career.
“Without a doubt.”
She’s All In made her five opponents in the Chicago circuit’s biggest main track race for fillies and mares look like hobby horses when she surged early in the Hawthorne Race Course stretch and went on to win by a widening 8¾ lengths.
“She had given some indications she’d be a nice 5-year-old, and getting to run the mile and an eighth was a big key,” Von Hemel said.
Fourth choice in the betting at odds of 5.40-1, She’s All In went the distance in 1:51.79 in taking Von Hemel and owner-breeder Robert Zoellner to the winner’s circle for the 11th time. After winning her last four races in 2011, she had two thirds and then a second in her first three starts this year at Oaklawn Park.
“Donnie said all along a mile and an eighth would be better for her and she had an awesome workout before she left Oaklawn (a 5-furlong breeze in 1:00.40 on April 14),” jockey Luis Quinonez said.
Love and Pride built a big lead during the opening half-mile and offered brief resistance when She’s All In bore down on her in the upper stretch, then faded to fourth.
Distorted Love, the longest shot at 35-1, came from last to earn second money, finishing 2¼ lengths in front of 6-5 favorite Arena Elvira, who arrived with a five-race winning streak that included two graded stakes.
“She ran evenly but never picked it up,” jockey Jose Lezcano said.