Charles Reed and Mike Zanella’s homebred filly Bold Affair zipped to the front, opened a clear advantage, and dominated the $75,000 Conniver Stakes on Saturday, March 10 at Laurel Park, winning by six and a half lengths. Last year’s Maryland-bred champion 3-year-old filly completed seven furlongs in 1:23.74 and earned a 99 Beyer speed figure.
Trained by Howard Wolfendale, Bold Affair left the gate as the 6-5 favorite under jockey Abel Castellano in the field of 10 Maryland-bred fillies and mares. Second-choice Baltimore Belle rallied for second while never threatening the winner, with Music Please finishing third, followed by Heaven’s Voice, Terra Rolla, Sound It Out, Lily Quatorze, Access to Charlie, Art of the Hunt and Overnight Fling.
“I was very impressed,” Castellano said. “I was waiting for the other horses to come, especially around the turn. I was wondering ‘where is everybody’ but she kept going. When I got to the quarter pole I asked her to go and again there was nobody coming.”
“I didn’t think she would run that big,” added Wolfendale. “I was waiting for her to start backing up but she kept going. It is a pleasure to train a horse as talented as that. Good horses make good trainers.”
“She is a great big filly with a big stride,” said Castellano. “I had a lot of confidence coming into the race. It was a very impressive performance.”
“She didn’t break well, which has been a problem, but since nobody sent she had enough speed to get out front and off the rail,” Wolfendale said.
Bold Affair is now five for nine lifetime and has finished off the board just once while earning $257,880. Last year, she scored in the $200,000 Jostle Stakes at Parx Racing and was third in Monmouth Park’s Dearly Precious and Pimlico’s Miss Preakness Stakes.
The chestnut daughter of Two Punch is out of the stakes-winning Colonial Affair mare Hunka Hunka Lori Z. Purchased by Reed out of the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern Fall Yearling sale in 1999 for $7,000, Hunka Hunka Lori Z campaigned for Reed and Zanella throughout her career, in which she made 34 starts, won seven races and earned $266,533. Among her victories were the Caesar’s Wish Stakes at Pimlico and Stefanita Stakes at Laurel Park.
Bold Affair is Hunka Hunka Lori Z’s third winner from three foals?–?her full sister, Lori Z’s Punch, also campaigns for the breeders and has earned $160,325. Hunka Hunka Lori Z has not had a live foal since producing Bold Affair and did not conceive the past two breeding seasons.
