Rivalry between defending champ Elle Z and Yes It’s Ginger in Saturday’s Pan Zareta
At 0h05, on December 3, 2021 • By FAIR GROUNDS
A ghost of Christmas past is oft-mentioned each December around Fair Grounds. Not just because she died on Christmas Day, but for the way she died and the tragedy of a career and lineage cut short. Pan Zareta, North America’s record-holder with 76 wins, caught a deadly case of pneumonia at age 8. She had transitioned from racing to become a broodmare, but after failing to get in foal, she was returned to training at Fair Grounds. And at Fair Grounds she remains, buried under the infield grass and celebrated every year by the circuit’s best turf sprinting fillies and mares in the $75,000 Pan Zareta Stakes.
A quality field of 11 female turf sprinters are programmed for Saturday’s feature at Fai Grounds Race Course & Slots. M Bar O LLC’s Elle Z, Mike Diliberto’s lukewarm morning line favorite at 7-2, and Brilliant Racing & Tagg Team Racing’s Yes It’s Ginger (5-1) have met a few times before. 10 dominant lengths between them when they first met, favoring Elle Z. 1 and 1/4 gallant lengths between them favoring Yes It’s Ginger in their most recent. With a final time .045 seconds off the Ellis Park course record that day, Yes It’s Ginger’s connections aimed for Fall graded stakes at Kentucky Downs and Keeneland. Neither came up well for Yes It’s True’s five-year-old mare.
Looking at the last two races, bettors might assume Yes It’s Ginger’s form has departed as well. 6 ½ furlongs runs more like 7 furlongs at Kentucky Downs, then she ran in the drenched and downpouring conditions at Keeneland. Good excuses? Yes, but the fields have not corroborated the case made. Besides Change of Control, no other of the 22 horses faced have won since, and speed figures have regressed for those that have won. Will this be the return to her masterful Ellis Park performance?
