By Dick Jerardi
Tuesday’s $75,000 Main Line was the first Parx stakes of 2025 and, after a gate to wire win by 23-1 Burner Account, it was the first stakes win for Holiday Luck Racing and trainer Miguel Rodriguez. It gets better as Holiday Luck is the stable name for Let’s Go Racing host Dani Gibson and her mother Mary. And Rodriguez just happens to be Dani’s fiancee.
Burner Account was originally bought by D.J. Stable as a yearling for $15,000. When the filly was offered at a 2-year-old digital sale last July after two starts for trainer Mark Casse, Dani went to $20,000 and got the Minnesota-bred daughter by Flameaway out of a New York bred mare that was winless in two starts, beaten by more than 41 lengths.
None of that mattered when Burner Account began to pull away under jockey Anthony Salgado in the final yards of the mile and sixteenth Main Line, eventually winning by 5 3/4 lengths. The $44,100 winner’s purse brought the filly’s earnings to $90,255 in six starts. The last two starts, with blinkers on, were on a different level, a win by 7 1/4 lengths in an optional claimer and now this.
“Miguel picked her out,” Dani said. “She was like fifth on our list and I got outbid on our other ones.”
But she got the one that mattered. They picked the filly up at Colonial Downs and she is now a stakes winner, their stakes winner.
At the insistence of LGR producer Bruce Casella, Dani interviewed her mom after the race.
“I didn’t sleep last night,” Mary Gibson said. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
Dani called it the “best day of her life.” And why not?
Horse racing does that to people. It’s hard to win in this game and when you do, there is no feeling quite like it.
The trainer had been smoking hot coming into the stakes. With that first stakes win, Rodriguez completed a 6-for-9 run, a cool 67 percent winners since Feb. 25.
Miss Holiday Luck was “our really good barrel racing horse that we had,” Dani said. Thus, the stable name.
Miss Holiday Luck was the first horse Mary Gibson ever bought. She cost $1,500 and they had her for 36 of her 38 years.
“My mom always wanted one little stakes filly,” Dani said.
The track was yielding very slow times all day. Burner Account went the 6 furlongs in 1:16.46 and finished out in 1:53.95. The time, of course, won’t matter to the owners and trainer. That first stakes win is forever.
The $75,000 City of Brotherly Love, which went off 24 minutes after the Main Line, ended with a very familiar owner/trainer combination in the winner’s circle when Baby Dukes held off a race-long challenge from Right Wing Runner to win by three-quarters of a length for Cash Is King (Chuck Zacney)/LC Racing (Glenn Bennett) and trainer Butch Reid.
The trainer had high hopes for Baby Dukes as a 2-year-old, running him in the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga in his second start. While the colt did well, banking $89,175 after being purchased for $130,000 as a yearling in October 2023, Reid always thought there was more they were not seeing. So Baby Dukes was gelded earlier this year and showed a new dimension in the City of Brotherly Love.
“I wasn’t sure if he was ready to go this far,” Reid said.
Right Win Runner off at 7-1, got by Baby Dukes at the eighth pole, but Baby Dukes, the 6-5 favorite, came right back to win it in 1:52.71 for the mile and a sixteenth. The horse has now exceeded the purchase price with $133,275 in career earnings in seven starts,
Baby Dukes, who was ridden by Eliseo Ruiz, is a son of excellent sire Maximus Mischief, a stable star for the same connections in late 2018 and early 2019. Reid has “tons” of Maximus Mischief offspring in the barn and “over half a dozen on the van on the way up as we speak.”
And why not? It was a winning formula when the horse ran and remains a winning formula with his sons and daughters.
