HoofprintsInc.com
Galiana (Stonesider)’s love affair with Delaware Park showed no sign of cooling off on Saturday when she won the $100,000 Sweet and Sassy Stakes, a six-furlong sprint for fillies and mares, to run up her record over the Wilmington oval to 6-5-1-0, including two stakes victories.
Owned and trained by Rodolfo Romero, Galiana saved ground early in third under jockey Abel Lezcano before moving into second at the head of the stretch. Game under a long drive, she wore down pacesetter Winning Image, took the lead one-sixteenth of a mile from home and opened up to get the win by 1 3/4 lengths in a sharp final time of 1:08.92.
A maiden breaker for a $7,500 tag at first asking at Delaware Park in June 2013, and upset winner of Delaware Park’s Tax Free Shopping Distaff for Delaware-bred or Certified fillies and mares the following September, Galiana won the Dashing Beauty this year on June 12 by two lengths. Returning for her fourth race in five and a half weeks in the Sweet and Sassy, she ran up her career record to 8-1-1 from 13 starts with $289,540 in earnings with the victory.
A 4-year-old daughter of Stonesider, who stands at Saratoga Stud LLC in Stillwater for a 2014 fee of $3,500, Galiana was bred by John T. Behrendt and Charles Marquis and foaled at Anne Morgan and Tim Little’s Mill Creek Farm in Stillwater. Galiana is the only North American winner to date out of Baby Jess, an unraced Argentinian-bred daughter of Interprete (ARG).
