Please indulge me as I wax a little effusive about this particular race last week.  In the tradition of many who have played the sim long and hard before finally tasting graded victory, I would like to make known my long-awaited success, but this time using the platform of the BTB.  This is not to downplay the fine horses my little mare faced last week, and we’ll mention those competitors here, but I’m still a bit excited about the news and want to share it.  My 4-year-old FLAMBOYANT GOTHIC(JPN), from the 5wide stable, won this Florida Grade 2 last week.

As I looked ahead to last week, I had to test the idea that FLAMBOYANT GOTHIC(JPN) just had an off day or bad luck in the Canada on February 6th.  She came into that one off a series of allowance wins with increasing speeds, followed by a barn-burning 111 as she battled KORNSNAKE(IRE) in a listed stakes.  There were a few opportunities in week 4246, including the Azeri and Margarita, but this looked like a good spot to see if the Gothgirl was really a graded type.

It looks like the Canada was a fluke:  she gained the advantage over a tough THE SKIRLING PASS(KY) late in the stretch and posted a length win, which was also her first stakes victory.  BEL KA TRAZET(IRE) came late but didn’t have enough to overtake the top two, while Canada show horse INHERIT THE THRONE(KY) rated more than usual but managed only fourth.

So she jumped from a 700-something ranking (if I remember correctly) in Older Female Dirt Classic to 79th.  She is also now the top earning member of her cohort of French Deputy foals (2008) and the only stakeswinner.

Looking ahead, we’ll see how she feels mid-April and look for a graded stakes in the division around then.  If she seems like she needs a little more rest, given her three races in the last nine weeks, then she will get turned out until early summer.  She has yet to taste turf, so we’ll have to try that somewhere down the road (French Deputy offspring are not hopeless on the stuff), but for now let’s not mess with the formula!

How did this happen?  I picked up FLAMBOYANT GOTHIC(JPN)’s dam, CRYPTOMAMBO, for $2.5k.  She was a claiming veteran with a few wins and some decent speeds.  She won a few races for me, and when I began to consider using her as a broodmare, I was looking for a sire who wouldn’t break the bank.  Cryptoclearance is a solid enough sire and damsire, and Kingmambo in CRYPTOMAMBO’s pedigree was not going to hurt, but overall CRYPTOMAMBO was not a stakeswinner or big-speed-number mare.  French Deputy was a moderately priced, credit-available sire with a sprinkling of stakeswinners, and an outcross to the Mr. P-heavy CRYPTOMAMBO.  So there she was.  The name?  I took the “crypt” part  and the “French” part and was thinking of French cathedrals.  Some are built in the fancy Flamboyant Gothic style, and that sounded nice.  Other owners of sharemare CRYPTOMAMBO have since bred CLEARLY AHEAD(KY), a First Samurai winning 3-year-old, and TRADING MAGIC(KY), an E Dubai juvenile who was last in his debut.