Adam Coglianese
Saul and Max Kupferberg’s Sunny Desert (Wild Desert) won her fifth straight race on Wednesday, stalking and pouncing under regular rider Ramon Dominguez in Aqueduct’s $100,000 NYSS Staten Island division of the New York Stallion Stakes series for fillies and mares.
An overwhelming .35-1 favorite to win the female division of Wednesday’s co-featured 7-furlong Stallion Series races for horses three and up, Sunny Desert sat in fourth just off a lively scramble for the lead, where Haldane (at the rail), longshot Mah Jong Madness (in the two path) and Jitney (three wide) vied for the top spot. Meanwhile, closer Lady On the Run, winner of the Staten Island last year, trailed the five-horse field.
Given her cue exiting the turn, Sunny Desert looped the leaders in upper stretch – Jitney the most tenacious of the bunch – to take the lead. In the final furlong Lady on the Run loomed a possible threat with a late run, but did not manage to make up the requisite ground as Sunny Desert widened her lead to 2 3/4 lengths by the finish line under a hand ride.
Jitney finished third, 1 1/4 lengths behind Lady On the Run, while Haldane and Mah Jong Madness completed the order of finish. The winning time for seven furlongs over the fast Aqueduct main track was 1:24 flat.
Ramon Dominguez noted some trouble at the start that left them further off the pace than he expected. “I got squeezed between the two horses next to me [at the start] and she was a little bit further back than I thought she’d be, but she was much the best. It’s hard to say what her best distance is; I tried to get her going a little earlier, coming off a mile race. But once she gets in gear, she’s all business.”
Winning trainer John Parisella said, “She’s shown that she’s versatile. You don’t like [troubled starts], but nothing stops her right now. She’s special. You don’t have many fillies like that. They have that one style, and everything has to come up right. That’s what makes her special; things don’t have to come up right.”
Claimed for $35,000 by Parisella on behalf of the Kupferbergs out of a fourth-place effort in her third career start at Aqueduct on December 7, 2011, 3-year-old Sunny Desert has never finished worse than second in seven races since, and has won her last five starts, including three stakes and at least one race at each of the NYRA racetracks.
Following a pair of runner-up finishes in January, Sunny Desert began her parade of victories with a 15 1/4-length maiden breaking effort at Aqueduct in March. After winning the NYSS Park Avenue by a nose in May at Belmont, she added victories in a second-level optional claimer for state-breds at Saratoga in July, and the open Judy Soda overnight stakes at Belmont on September 14 by 6 1/4 lengths for a career high Beyer Speed Figure of 86. Her starts have been spaced out by design by Parisella.
With a career record that now stands at 5-3-0 from 10 starts, Sunny Desert has earned $266,750.
Bred by Breed of Characters LLC and foaled at McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds, Sunny Desert is the second foal and second stakes horse out of the winning Louis Quatorze mare Hoping for Sun. Sunny Desert’s elder half-brother, Bound by Humor by Sharp Humor ($87,720), ran third in last year’s Corma Ray S. Hoping for Sun currently has a weanling colt by Two Step Salsa, to whom she was bred back this spring.
Sunny Desert changed hands once via public auction, going as a weanling at the OBS Fall Mixed sale for $2,000 to her first owners Drs. K. K. and Vilasini D. Jayaraman, from whom she was claimed last December.
Wild Desert, who entered stud in 2008, stood at McMahon’s from 2008-2010 and at Unbridled Racing Stable near Greenville in 2011. He was not registered in New York in 2012.
