Adam Coglianese
Saul and Max Kupferberg’s Sunny Desert (Wild Desert) prevailed by a length in the evenly-matched and contentious field of the $75,000 Cat Cay Stakes for 4-year-old fillies at Aqueduct on Sunday to secure a sixth straight victory and fourth career stakes score.
Odds-on post time favorite under Ramon Dominguez and toting the co-highweight of 122 pounds, Sunny Desert trailed the four-horse field in the early going, enjoying a groundsaving trip three lengths off the lead. Beginning her move from midway on the far turn, she drew even with the leader at the sixteenth pole before drawing off to win by one length. In her first start around two turns, Sunny Desert completed the 1 mile and 70 yards in a final time of 1:42.46.
The running of the Cat Cay was tragically marred when Francis J. Paolangeli’s talented homebred Wildcat’s Smile broke down fatally in upper stretch after setting the pace. Winner of the Sarcastic Stakes and the New York Breeders’ Futurity against males for trainer Dominic Galluscio, the striking blaze-faced dark bay filly was twice Grade 2 placed, finishing second by a nose in the Demoiselle and third in the Black-Eyed Susan in 2012. She compiled a record of 4-4-2 from 13 starts and earned $420,321.
Sunny Desert was claimed by trainer John Parisella on behalf of the Kupferbergs on December 7, 2011 for $35,000 out of a fourth-place effort in her third career start at Aqueduct. The filly has never finished worse than second in eight races since and won her last six, including three other stakes (NYSS Park Avenue, open Judy Soda and NYSS Staten Island). Sunny Desert’s career record now stands at 6-3-0 from 11 starts with $311,750 in earnings.
Bred by Breed of Characters LLC and foaled at McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds, Sunny Desert sold as a weanling at the OBS Fall Mixed sale for $2,000 to her first owners K. K. and Vilasini D. Jayaraman, from whom she was claimed last December. She 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 the Corma Ray S. Hoping for Sun currently has a newly-turned yearling colt by Two Step Salsa, to whom she was bred back this spring.
Wild Desert, who entered stud in 2008, stood at McMahon’s from 2008-2010 and at Unbridled Racing Stable near Greenville in 2011.
