Chocolate Gelano faces Chop Chop in BC Juvenile Fillies

The $2M NetJets Juvenile Fillies is headline in the Future Stars Friday card, with a full field of fourteen lasses going 8.5 furlongs on the main track at Keeneland.

Chocolate Gelato debuted in a 5.5 furlongs sprint at Saratoga and landed the show dough. The benefit of experience led to an 8-1/2 lengths romp in start two and she obtained berth in start three, taking the G1 Frizette over sloppy/sealed going at Belmont at the Big A. This daughter of Into Mischief scion, Practical Joke, is out of the Candy Ride (ARG) mare, Special Treat. Her particular branch of the 1-x female family is responsible for producing the likes of Numbered Account, Imagining, Super Saver, Callback, Girolamo, and Rhythm, the latter of which won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in 1989.

Chop Chop came up a just nose short in the Darley Alcibiades, and thus suffered her first defeat. She had won her first two starts, both on turf, and the last being a stakes score over yielding ground in the Juvenile Fillies at Kentucky Downs. The Brad Cox trainee is owned by Selective, and is first crop representative of 2018’s Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile victor, City of Light, who stands at Lane’s End. Her dam, Grand Sofia, is by Giant’s Causeway, and a half-sister to Rail Trip, who set a new track record winning the Hollywood Gold Cup on the all-weather. He was also second to Tapizar in the 2012 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Santa Anita. The family also includes multiple G1 winner and multi-millionaire Palace Malice, who counts amongst his accomplishments the Belmont Stakes and Metropolitan Handicap.