2018 Groupie Doll Stakes Contenders & Odds at Ellis Park

Harlan's Holiday daughter Pinch Hit looking for Groupie Doll Victory

The $100,000 Grade III Groupie Doll Stakes will be run Sunday for the 37th time at Ellis Park Race Course in Henderson County, Kentucky. Leading the way is Harlan's Holiday daughter Pinch Hit.

Louisville owner Richard Klein said that right after the 3-year-old Pinch Hit finished fourth in Ellis Park's Grade 3 Groupie Doll last year that trainer Brad Cox told him the filly would be their 2018 winner.

Pinch Hit has done her part so far in not only getting to the Groupie Doll but as one of the favorites off her victory in Indiana Grand's $100,000 Mari Hulman George Stakes.

"Now we're taking a step up and hopefully she can be competitive in the step up," Klein said. "The funny thing is that after the race last year, Brad said, `Circle the Groupie Doll next year. We're going to win it with this filly.' He said, `Our goal is to get her to this race next year and to win the Grade 3.'"

Prophecy aside, here's another reason to like Pinch Hit: Cox has won 15 of his last 29 starts at Ellis Park, including two stakes last Sunday, after starting off 0 for 13 in pursuit of his second training title at the track.

Cox also has used the Mari Hulman George as a very effective launching pad to Groupie Doll success. Tiger Moth swept the races last year, and Call Pat captured the 2015 Groupie Doll after being second at Indiana Grand. The Groupie Doll was the first graded victory for both fillies.

With five wins (two in stakes) and three seconds in 13 starts, a graded-stakes victory or even placing would be significant for Pinch Hit's value as a broodmare. Not that she'll ever be sold, as the daughter of Harlan's Holiday is special to Klein.

Pinch Hit, bred by Klein in partnership with his parents, won the day before the death of his dad, Bert. The Louisville banker and philanthropist was buried with the silks and win photo from the race. Then on the birthday of Klein's late mother, Elaine, Pinch Hit won an allowance race at Churchill Downs at 19-1.

Pinch Hit followed that with a six-length allowance win at Ellis Park to earn a shot at last year's Groupie Doll, in which fourth place was a big effort after being wide much of the race. The filly won Churchill Downs' Dogwood Stakes in her next start.

The filly has improved in three starts this year: a fourth in Churchill's Grade 3 Winning Colors that at six furlongs might have been a little short for her, a troubled second in an allowance race won by Groupie Doll contender Champagne Problems and then the Indiana stakes victory.

"It took probably a little longer than we wanted to bring her back (off a layoff), but it's worked out well," Klein said.

Pinch Hit can take the sting away from last Sunday at Ellis, where Klein's horse Will Call, also trained by Cox, was seventh (though beaten only three lengths for everything) as the strong favorite in the $100,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Sprint. Will Call had been scheduled to run at Saratoga in Sunday's Troy Stakes but was rerouted back to Kentucky because of concern of soft turf after all the rain in New York.

"My horse is the only one who didn't step up for Brad or Shaun," said Klein, referencing jockey Shaun Bridgmohan's six-win and Cox's four-win afternoon. "I think it was the shipping from Saratoga. It may have zapped him, who knows? It is what it is."

Still, he doesn't second-guess that decision. "They ran the Troy on the turf, and the horse that won I guess tore a suspensory and is retired," Klein said.

Cox also is running the 3-year-old Ellis allowance winner Sense of Bravery in the Groupie Doll, perhaps with an eye on the 2019 race.

Trainer Larry Jones Agenda: Win Groupie Doll At Hometown Track

Larry Jones is back at his hometown track where he launched his training career in 1982. Now he'll try to win Ellis Park's marquee stakes for the first time with Jenda's Agenda in Sunday's Grade 3, $100,000 Groupie Doll while also saddling Believe in Royalty and Kowboy Karma in the augural running of the $75,000 Ellis Park Derby on the undercard.

The Groupie Doll attracted a field of 11 fillies and mares, headed by Indiana Grand's Mari Hulman George winner Pinch Hit, who was fourth in the stakes last year. The Ellis Park Derby drew a capacity 12 entrants. Both races are a mile.

Jones stabled for many years at Ellis Park, short drives from his Henderson farm and from where he grew up in Hopkinsville. His first stakes victory was at Ellis Park, the 1986 Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonel Stakes with Capt. Bold, an $800 yearling purchase. Eighteen years later, Jones trained the first Ellis Park-based horse to win a Grade 1 stakes in New York when Island Sand took Belmont Park's 2004 Acorn after finishing second in the Kentucky Oaks.

After relocating to Delaware Park following the 2005 tornado that ravished Ellis, Jones went on to win the Kentucky Oaks three times (Proud Spell, Believe You Can and Lovely Maria) and has had 10 individual horses win Grade 1 races, including 2011 Horse of the Year Havre de Grace and 2007 Kentucky Derby runner-up Hard Spun. Jones returned to Ellis Park for one summer in 2012, including having Believe You Can stabled at the Pea Patch, but this is his first full summer to have a barn here since.

"I was here 27 seasons in a row," said Jones, who also has horses training at Churchill Downs. "... They say you can never go home, but it feels good to be here. I'm selling my house in Delaware, so we're Kentucky again."

Jenda's Agenda is a daughter of Just Jenda, a multiple stakes-winner trained by Jones and co-owned by Jones and his wife, Cindy. The Joneses bred and own Jenda's Agenda but early on sold half-interest to major client Rick Porter.

Like her mom, Jenda's Agenda got off to a quick start as a racehorse, winning her first three races last year at age 3. Even after being sidelined 10 1/2 months with an injury, Jenda's Agenda came right back with a good second off the layoff and then a smart win in an Oaklawn Park allowance race.

But in her subsequent two starts, Jenda's Agenda was 11th and sixth, losing by 18 lengths in both Keeneland's Grade 3 Doubledogdare and Prairie Meadows' $100,000 Iowa Distaff. Jones suspects the filly had developed minor bone bruising that seems to be rectified and is hoping the Groupie Doll proves those debacles are not representative of who the 4-year-old filly really is.

"I hope not," he said. "We moved her to Ellis Park, and she's working really good over this course. Gabriel Saez will be back on her. That's who kind of got her started and going. We're sure keeping our fingers crossed that we've got her back. At first we thought maybe it was the Keeneland track that she wasn't liking so she didn't work well there. But then she started working a little better at Churchill.

"Although she won at Oaklawn and did good, she just never was quite the same after that. I'm going to kind of blame it on bone bruising. Nothing enough to make her lame or make her gallop bad, but when she hit that very top speed, then she could feel it. We moved her over here, because if it's bone bruising, this track has so much cushion and stuff. I'm really happy with how she's doing right now."

Believe in Royalty is out of Jones' 2012 Oaks winner Believe You Can and a son of Gainesway Farm's super-sire Tapit. After setting the pace and weakening to third in a Churchill Downs' allowance race, Believe in Royalty closed from last to finish fourth - but only two lengths from winning after coming six-wide - in the $250,000 Iowa Derby. Second in that race was Mr Freeze, who in his next start won the $750,000 West Virginia Derby.

"We tried a different style with him last time, coming from off the pace, and it seemed like, `OK, we've maybe found out what we need to do,'" Jones said. "He's got enough early speed that he puts you in the race real quick if you want him to, or you let him. But we're going to try maybe the same technique here, bringing him from off the pace and make one big run. He does have talent. These Tapits, some of them are a little tough. We weren't trying to tell him how to do it. We were just trying to see what he wanted us to do. So maybe this is it."

Jones said a mile might be a little far for Kowboy Karma, a son of 2009 sprint champion Kodiak Kowboy trained by Jones. Kowboy Karma, winner of a small stakes last year at Delaware and fourth in Belmont's Grade 1 Champagne, last ran when second in a Keeneland allowance race on April 12.

"He's training good enough, doing his gallop-outs really well," Jones said. "He's not working as fast maybe as he was. But we're trying to get him to where he can go a little longer. We're hoping maybe a little different training technique on him will pay off."

Jones, a familiar site on the track with his tall frame galloping horse after horse in the mornings, said several weeks ago that he was going to hang up his chaps. At 61, he thought it was age that had his arms and legs feeling sore and achy. Instead, his Evansville physician, horse owner Steed Jackson, told him this week that it was the onset of the shingles virus. It was caught early, is being treated and Jones is feeling better.

"I said, `Darn, who knows? Maybe I'll want to go back to galloping after all of this. I just thought I was old and broke down. Maybe I still have another 70 years left in me,'" Jones joked. "I told (the doctor) it's not like you'll never see me on a horse, because I rode the pony today. But I said, `Me galloping 10 or 12 a day is out. I'm not going to do that anymore.' And I'm not, no matter how good I feel. But you might see me on two or three horses.

"But it's time. I knew my reflexes were starting to change. This way I quit on my terms. I tried to roughly estimate and I know I have galloped over a half-million miles. And I ain't going nowhere. I wind up right back where I started every time!"