Evvie Jets takes on a tall task in G1 Just a Game

Evvie Jets is tasked with a seemingly impossible test, taking on five contenders from the barn of four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Chad Brown, when she tries her luck in Friday’s Grade 1, $500,000 Just a Game, at Saratoga Race Course.

Trained by Mertkan Kantarmaci for the Estate of Robert J. Amendola, the 6-year-old Twirling Candy mare, at 15-1, is the longest shot on the morning line in the seven-horse field. But that doesn’t faze Kantarmaci, who watched the tenacious bay eschew her usual frontrunning tactics here last summer by taking back under Manny Franco and surging up the rail to win the Grade 2 Mohegan Sun Ballston Spa by a head at odds of 29-1 over the Brown-trained Fluffy Socks.

“That day, we wanted her to be on the front but another longshot [Sister Bridget] and Chad’s Brown good horse – Technical Analysis – they went so fast, and she couldn’t keep up that pace,” Kantarmaci recalled. “Manny let her be her own pace and step-by-step got closer to them and took advantage of the rail. She responded really well at the three-eighths and by the quarter-pole – it was a really aggressive ride Manny gave and she kept going.