By Dick Jerardi
Two years ago, trainer Hugo Padilla took The City of Brotherly Love with Washington bred Lonesome Boy who came all the way from the northwest to Parx. Tuesday, Padilla won the race with Pennsylvania bred Red Zone Runner who came to his barn from a mere 110 miles west at Penn National. Lonesome Boy won big by 6 3/4 lengths with jockey Adam Bowman, Red Zone Runner won even bigger by 15 1/2 lengths with Mychel Sanchez along for the romp.
Red Zone Runner, off at 4-5, ran the mile and a sixteenth on a sloppy, sealed track in 1:46.67, 2.67 seconds (or 25 Beyer points) faster than The Main Line for the 3-year-old fillies in the race before. Red Zone Runner had been trained at PEN for owner Tom Coulter before he decided to send the horse to Parx and Padilla in 2026.
The colt ran well as a 2-year-old, finishing third in both the Heft Stakes at Laurel and behind Mailata in the Pa. Nursery at Parx. But this race, the first around two turns, was quite different. In fact, it was the kind of performance that makes an owner, trainer and jockey think big.
“I felt like we were going fast, but he was doing it so easy,” Sanchez said. “He was so comfortable all the way around…He felt like a good one, kind of gives you little goosebumps.”
Lonesome Boy’s next race after The City of Brotherly Love was the Wood Memorial, where he finished fourth at 80-1. Red Zone Runner could be headed to Aqueduct for the Wood as well.
“I was very surprised and very happy,” Padilla said when he got the call from the owner to train the horse.
Coulter has had good horses for years, including Nimitz Class, who won the 2023 Parx Dirt Mile and more than $700,000 for the owner.
Coulter was blown away by what he saw from Red Zone Runner.
“I didn’t know,” the owner said. “First time two turns, first time sloppy track, you don’t know what to expect. But, wow. He delivered today.”
Ivy Girl did not blow anybody away in her come from last win in The Main Line for owner Lucky Hat Racing, trainer Amelia Green and jockey Jaime Rodriguez.
The filly, sent off at 10-1, needed every bit of the stretch to run down 27-1 Halo Hottie for trainer John Servis. Rodriguez came up the rail in the stretch and that may very have been the difference in a race that was won by a head.
Interestingly, Halo Hottie won what now looks like a hot maiden race on Oct. 21 at Parx with Ivy Girl third. It was Halo Hottie’s first race since then while Ivy Girl, who was shipped from her Belmont Park base, had raced three more times. Green outfitted her with blinkers for The Main Line and the filly responded.
“We were kind of looking at any spot going two turns,” Green said of the decision to come to Parx. “Ever since she came in as a 2-year-old, we were waiting for the longer races. She never looked like a one-turn horse and obviously when we saw the race and we were one of the only horses with the distance under our belt already, we thought it was a good place to get (stakes) placing, but obviously delighted to win, very proud of the filly.”
The British-born Green had worked for trainer Sir Henry Cecil when he had the legendary Frankel in his barn. She came to the United States and worked first in Southern California before joining Todd Pletcher’s powerhouse barn in 2017, where she was an assistant trainer and exercise rider who travelled all over with some of the stable’s top stakes horses.
She took out her trainer’s license in late 2024 and has been spending more than her fair share of time in winner’s circles since then.
“Very cool,” Green said of her time as a trainer. “Just to be living what I’ve always wanted to do since I was a kid to me is very cool every day. Winning any race is cool, but a stakes race is where everyone wants to be.”
The surprise in the race was that 1-5 favorite Law School could do no better than a non-threatening third. Trainer Jamie Ness brought her back in just 10 days after a good second in a Laurel stake. When asked what might have happened to Law School, Ness, the ultimate no excuse trainer, thought maybe she just is not as good on an off track. She ran on an off track in that Laurel race after an amazing performance on a fast track at Parx in the Future Stars Filly division at Parx on Dec. 30.
