ELMONT, N.Y. -- Ramon Dominguez and Our Khrysty came into the Belmont Park stretch looking as though they were going to turn Saturday's Grade 3, $100,000 Turnback the Alarm Handicap into a laugher.
The win was the first in a graded stakes for Our Khrysty, a 4-year-old daughter of Newfoundland owned by Renpher Stable and trained by Todd Beattie. It was the sixth win from 17 career starts for Our Khrysty. Our Khrysty broke slowly and was last early on as Manitoba Miss and Miss Match were heads apart through a half-mile in 46.84 seconds. Funny Moon, under Alan Garcia, was racing in fourth position outside of Way With Words. Funny Moon inherited the lead just before the three-eighths pole and seemed to be cruising. Dominguez made a four-wide move around the far turn and she was in second position turning for home.
Our Khrysty came up alongside Funny Moon outside the eighth pole and the two were inseparable through the final furlong before Our Khrysty got up in the final strides. Our Khrysty covered the 1 1/16 miles in 1:43.21 and returned $5.40 to win. "I felt like I had a lot of horse," Dominguez said. "When I'm looking at Alan's filly I know she's a pretty nice filly as well and she was extremely handy, I thought 'it might not be as easy as I wanted it to be.' I came to her, the other filly kept on fighting and at one point I didn't know if I was going to be able to get up.
My filly was pretty determined to win." While Garcia said he didn't intend to make the lead so early, he didn't think it had an effect on the outcome of the race. "The other horses were backing up and I stayed in the clear and she took me right there," Garcia said. "I didn't want to keep fighting with her to take her back, I wanted to put my head down and if she's good enough she's going to win. The other horse was better."