Horse Racing

‘I Buy Good Horses Cheap’: $1,000 Yearling Scores Allowance Win At Ellis


Inga Demeritte’s 2-year-old filly Lady Glamour now is 2 for 3 — with a third place sandwiched in between in Churchill Downs’ $125,000 Debutante Stakes

Inga Demeritte’s 2-year-old filly Lady Glamour now is 2 for 3 — with a third place sandwiched in between in Churchill Downs’ $125,000 Debutante Stakes — after taking Ellis Park’s $51,000 allowance race Friday by 7 1/4 lengths over odds-on favorite Josie.

Not bad for a horse that trainer Larry Demeritte, the owner’s husband, paid $1,000 for at Fasig-Tipton‘s October yearling sale. And who opted to keep Lady Glamour after the high bid of $145,000 at Fasig-Tipton’s horses of racing age sale earlier this month did not reach his predetermined minimum selling price.

Demeritte said he isn’t surprised how well his bargain purchase has done, saying, “I thought I was getting a racehorse. Like I always say, ‘I buy good horses cheap. I don’t buy cheap horses.’ A lot of them turn out to do very well. But you have to work hard when you look in that price range, because our budget is limited. You have to look at all the horses in the sale and take a chance. And this filly looked like she’s the real deal.”

Of her victory Friday at Ellis, he said, “That was awesome. She was off 10 days when she was in the sale. We didn’t get the reserve so we bought her back knowing she’ll do very well racing.”

His owner also used the word “awesome” to describe the performance.

“She’s just a great horse,” said Inga Demeritte. “I know when he chooses a horse, it’s a good horse. He looks at everything, the conformation, checks everything out. I know he’s going to get that horse ready to be No. 1. I have that confidence in him. He’s very good at evaluating horses.”

Demeritte is a self-described “old-fashioned” trainer. As such, he started Lady Glamour (Discreet Cat) out in a $40,000 maiden-claiming race. His motivation wasn’t the belief that nobody would pay $40,000 to claim a first-time starter bought for $1,000 but rather “I wanted to give her confidence from Day One.”

However, he did not hesitate to put Lady Glamour in a stakes in her second start. “I thought I could win it,” he said, adding of the Steve Asmussen-trained Debutante winner Magic Dance, “but Steve has a really nice filly that beat me. But maybe in time, if we can stretch out a little more, we can become competitive with her, hopefully. But that’s a nice, nice filly that won the stakes.”

The allowance race, for which Lady Glamour ran 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:17.44, was positioned as a prep for the $100,000 Ellis Park Debutante at seven furlongs on Aug. 18. But Demeritte doesn’t know if he’ll point to that stakes.

“We’ll play this by ear; see what she’s like when we get her back home,” said the Lexington-based trainer. “August is one of the hottest months around, so I’d like to maybe put her on the shelf. But if she’s training lights out then, I may have to run. And I’m like the old-fashioned trainer. We might bring her back in (an allowance) race. We have a lot to look forward to in the spring of next year. Horses gain confidence as they win. That’s why I try to make it easy for her, instead of coming right back in another stakes. But this was a good bunch of fillies today that she ran against. You’ll see a lot of them running in stakes races.”

“She’s pretty smart,” said Graham, aboard for all of Lady Glamour’s races. “She’s improved. Her first race was a good race; she ran fast. A little unlucky at Churchill. Experience caught her that day. And today she showed what she can do. This was a better field, I think personally, than the stakes, but you never know. But she ran hard. She did it the right way.”





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