Splendora recorded her second Grade 1 victory, and became racing's newest millionaire, after cruising home in the $300,000 B. Wayne Hughes Beholder Mile Stakes for fillies and mares at Santa Anita on Saturday, March 7. 

Coming in off three consecutive stakes scores at Del Mar and Santa Anita and sent off the 1-9 favorite in the field of five, the Bob Baffert-trained Audible mare broke nicely under jockey Juan Hernandez and wasted no time going to the front. "She's really fast out of the gate," Hernandez said to reporters after the race. "She was doing it really easy. The first fraction was just perfect."

Well in hand with ears flicking, she galloped on the lead through opening fractions of :23.49 and :46.77 and extended the margin around the far turn without Hernandez moving in the saddle. After six furlongs in 1:10.31, she pulled away down the stretch and motored home by five and three-quarters lengths while stopping the clock for the mile distance in 1:35.16.

"She's just getting better and better," Baffert told Santa Anita's media department. "I haven't mapped anything out for her next race. She'll tell me when she's ready to go next time, and we'll bring her fresh. The main thing is to get her to the Breeders' Cup, get her that championship, which she should have gotten last year."

Winner of last fall's Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint-G1 and a finalist in two Eclipse Award categories, Splendora is on a five-race win streak, which began with a six-furlong allowance by three and a half lengths at Del Mar on July 24, followed by the one-mile Tranquility Lake Stakes on Sept. 1 at Del Mar, the Breeders' Cup two months later and, in her first start this year, the seven-furlong D. Wayne Lukas Stakes-G2 at Santa Anita on Feb. 7.

Michael Talla's By Talla Racing, which purchased Splendora as a yearling for $125,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July sale in 2022, says it's up to Baffert, but he's hoping to see the 5-year-old mare go east soon. ". . . we want to see some of those good fillies back east. We want to see how good they are." Talla brought in a new partner, Randy Boyd of Boyd Racing, earlier in the week. Boyd, president ​​of the University of Tennessee System, posted on his Facebook page immediately after the race: "We were running out of patience! It took her a whole 6 days to win a Grade 1 race! Splendora!! What an amazing horse!"

In a dozen lifetime starts, Splendora has a record of 7-4-0 for earnings of $1,160,800. Second in her only start at 2 behind stablemate and future multiple graded winner Kinza, she took a 10-month break before winning a Santa Anita maiden special weight in October 2024. A month later, she won a Del Mar allowance. She then made four straight graded stakes appearances, finishing second three times -- in the Grade 1 La Brea (her stakes debut behind multiple Grade 1 winner Kopion) and the Grade 2 Santa Maria and Santa Margarita.

Bred by Stuart Grant's The Elkstone Group LLC, Splendora is the second foal out of stakes winner Miss Freeze (by Frost Giant). Grant purchased Miss Freeze for $45,000 at the 2020 Keeneland November Breeding Stock sale with Splendora in utero. Miss Freeze returned home a $37,000 RNA after the 2023 Keeneland November sale -- her foal that year, the Demarchelier (GB) colt Oracle of Beaufort, is now 3 and as yet unraced, but has been working steadily at Fair Hill.

Miss Freeze delivered a Maryland-bred Tiz the Law filly last March before being bred to National Treasure. Her first foal, the filly Firsttimeinforever (by Always Dreaming), is a four-time winner with earnings of $211,345.

With the win, Splendora sits eighth on the NTRA's Top Thoroughbred Poll for March 9, moving up four spots from the previous week.