Dan Patch Award winner and Breeders Crown champion Yo Tillie is slated to make her four-year-old debut on Monday, April 27 at Oak Grove Racing, Gaming & Hotel in one of seven $50,000 USD first-round Kentucky Sire Stakes (KYSS) events on the 14-race program.
Yo Tillie won 11 of 12 starts and racked up $1,352,526 in purses in her sophomore season for trainer Andrew Harris, who shares ownership with fellow New Jersey residents William Pollock and Bruce Areman. Among those wins were her lifetime-best 1:50.2 score in the New Jersey Classic at The Meadowlands, a 1:51 win in the Kentucky Sire Stakes Championship Series final at The Red Mile and her season-ending 1:51.3 victory in the Grade 1 Breeders Crown Three-Year-Old Filly Trot at Woodbine Mohawk Park.
The daughter of Tactical Landing-Consolidator is the 4-5 morning line favourite in the lone KYSS preliminary for four-year-old trotting mares, which is carded as race 11, and usual driver Todd McCarthy will guide her from post six in the nine-horse field.
Among the eight mares Yo Tillie will face are 2025 Simcoe Stakes winner and Kentucky Filly Futurity runner-up R Dutchess, who will start from post five with Tim Tetrick driving and Tyler Butenschoen taking over the training, and 2025 fall Kentucky Sire Stakes series champ Winnpanzee, who will start from post four for driver Yannick Gingras and the Ron Burke barn.
Another millionaire Breeders Crown champion will make her four-year-old debut in race seven when Ontario-based Glenview Livestock's The Last Martini will line up as the 2-1 early favourite in the second of two KYSS prelims for four-year-old pacing mares.
The Huntsville-Martinique mare won six times as a sophomore, including her dead-heat 1:49.2 triumph with Dan Patch Award winner Miki And Minnie in the Grade 1 Breeders Crown Three-Year-Old Filly Pace and her front-stepping 1:55 score in the New York Sire Stakes championship. Doug McNair will drive The Last Martini from post three for trainer Jared Bako.
In addition to the first round of the spring Kentucky Sire Stakes series, 13 sophomore trotting fillies will contest a pair of $25,000 USD Oak Grove Trotting Oaks prep races — carded as race six and nine — in advance of next Monday's (May 4) eliminations for both the Oaks and the Oak Grove Trotting Derby. The finals, worth a combined $800,000 USD, head a blockbuster card of harness racing at the southwest Kentucky venue on Saturday, May 16.
First-race post time for this week's pair of 14-race cards, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, is 1:10 p.m. (CDT).
With files from Oak Grove)