Lock Down Lindy Looks To Lock Up Oaks trophy
Story by Ken Weingartner/Harness Racing Communications/USTA
Tony Alagna says Lock Down Lindy’s performance in her Hambletonian Oaks elimination last weekend was “a chance to show everybody she’s the filly I thought she was last year.” The trainer hopes she shows off again in Saturday’s $500,000 Hambletonian Oaks final for 3-year-old female trotters at Meadowlands Racetrack.
Lock Down Lindy won her Oaks elimination by two lengths over Wild Honey in a career-best 1:51.4 on Aug. 1. She will start the final from post No. 1, with driver Tim Tetrick, and is 3-1 on the morning line. Wild Honey, with Yannick Gingras driving for trainer Jimmy Takter, is the 5-2 favorite from post two.
The Hambletonian Oaks is Race No. 12 on a jammed-packed stakes card, with the $1.2 million Hambletonian Stakes for 3-year-old trotters as the centerpiece. The two $100,000 Hambletonian eliminations are races eight and nine and the $1 million final is race 13.
Post time for the first race is noon. Cable channel CBS Sports Network will air coverage of the Cane Pace, Hambletonian Oaks and Hambletonian from 4 to 5:30 p.m. (EDT).
Lock Down Lindy last year won two of seven races and earned $72,445. She won her elimination for the Merrie Annabelle Stakes at the Meadowlands and finished third in the final, behind Mission Brief and Jolene Jolene. She also finished third in a division of the Champlain Stakes, but finished her campaign by going off stride twice.
This season, she has won two of 10 races, hit the board a total of seven times, and earned $112,184 for owners Mystical Marker Farms, Crawford Partners, Joe Sbrocco, and In The Gym Partners. She finished second to Barn Doll in the Empire Breeders Championship and third in a division of the Reynolds Memorial. She entered her Hambletonian Oaks elimination off a ninth-place finish in the Zweig Memorial’s filly division, having gone off stride at the start of the race won by Mission Brief.
Lock Down Lindy is a daughter of Lucky Chucky out of the mare Love Lockdown. She was purchased as a yearling for $40,000 at the Lexington Selected Sale and her family includes stakes-winners Majestic Son and Misterizi.
“Everybody knows how much I liked this filly last year,” Alagna said. “She just had bad luck at the end of the season.
“We’ve been racing her pretty conservatively. (In the Zweig) she just got off on the wrong foot. I thought she had a really nice shot, not to beat Mission Brief of course, but to get a good piece of the action. She tried to leave from the rail and got tangled up and made a break. (In her Oaks elimination) she had a chance to show everybody she’s the filly I thought she was last year.”
