Respect the Valleys' Dazzling Dame made her first appearance in nearly three months and blew away the field in the one-mile $150,000 Busanda Stakes for sophomore fillies at Aqueduct on Saturday, Jan. 3. In the first 2026 stakes to offer Kentucky Oaks-G1 points, with 20 to the winner, Dazzling Dame now ranks third on the leaderboard with 22 points (just behind Super Corredora and Explora).
Under Jevian Toledo for trainer Brittany Russell, the daughter of Girvin took the lead early, setting fractions of :23.55 and :47.20 with favorite Believable applying slight pressure. Around the far turn, the big bay kicked clear to open a commanding lead, winning by 11 1/2 lengths in 1:38.30 over the fast track. Her time was more than three-fifths of a second faster than 3-year-old colt My World ran when winning the one-mile $150,000 Jerome earlier on the card.
"She ran great. Everything kind of went right the whole trip. We were thankful for that," Russell told the NYRA Press Office. "She came out of it and looks good. She seems really good."
Making her fifth career start, all at different tracks, she now has four wins, three in stakes. A five and three-quarter-length winner in her debut at Laurel Park on June 27, she stepped up to take the $100,000 Sorority Stakes at Monmouth next out on Aug. 17 and scored in the $100,000 White Clay Creek at Delaware Park on Oct. 11, her final start of the year. Her lone defeat was a fourth-place finish in the one-mile $300,000 Pocahontas Stakes-G3 at Churchill Downs on Sept. 13. She has now banked $240,525.
The plan for Dazzling Dame will be to target longer distances, with Russell hinting that Colonial Downs' $250,000 Virginia Oaks at a mile and a sixteenth in March or the nine-furlong Gazelle Stakes-G3 the next month at Aqueduct could be her next test. Both are on the Kentucky Oaks prep race points list.
Bred by Maria Haire and foaled at Northview Stallion Station, Dazzling Dame was purchased at the OBS March 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale by Respect the Valleys for $45,000 after being a $50,000 RNA as a weanling at the 2023 Keeneland November sale and selling for $65,000 to Tahoe Bloodstock at the 2024 OBS Winter Mixed Sale two months later.
Dazzling Dame is the fifth foal and third winner out of the multiple stakes-placed Corinthian mare Awesome Dama, who is related to Haire's former Maryland sire Eclipticalspraline. The latter's graded stakes-winning dam Ms. Mostly (by Copelan) is the granddam of Awesome Dama. Awesome Dama produced a filly by Pinehurst in 2024 and delivered an Engage filly on Preakness Day 2025.
