A really pleasant (and surprising!) day for Coleman Branch. Sent two out and both came home in the money.
[color=red]Afterlife ran 2/6 in a 8.5f NW3, beating out some quality horses for the place.
[color=blue]Highland Gamble, a recent $5k claim, took 1/6 by 49 1/4 lengths in his 8.5f Allowance.
We’re very happy with these results. 
We didn’t run any today but we did bring home a successful claim (much thanks to Shanthi) of Billabong who ran 4th.
We sent three out with mostly good results.
Marvelous Markus put in a nice effort and finished 3rd of 6 in an NW3.
Compass and Believe In Love were co-entrants in the ungr. Stymie Handicap. Compass hung gamely on to win it, while Bill showed his complete and utter hatred for anything below 10 furlongs by refusing to run much, and finished 12th of 14.
GREAT DAY for us here at Vaucluse.
Brilliant Success and Contradiction ran in the Gr.2 Winning Edge Stakes. Brilliant Success didn’t run well finishing seventh however Contradiction filled a minor placing finishing third. Good effort from her, but I’m considering sending her stable mate off to be bred this year.
Dashing Illusions was the best run of the day and a surprising but very welcome winner of the Gr.1 Thousand Guineas. I think she is our first classic winner in a long while. I paid just $55,000 for this filly as a 2YO in December and with this win her earnings for me are well over $300,000. Very happy with her!
Sweet Sayings was fourth in her allowance. She’ll break her maiden one day!
Torrid won her allowance in style. This decent sized black filly has had some nice enough runs this year and she may get a low grade stakes start next.
Vivanancyv was second in her allowance. I’m also hoping she will break her maiden soon! She’s a nice enough runner, she just can’t get over the line.
So very good day for us and I think Vaucluse might be back in business this year seeing as I think we might have actually just surpassed our entire earnings for 2011 in just over two months! 
For me…today’s experiment with training involved no training and all farm rest(it had worked with a few other horses) right after previous race and flopped-badly, Gazelle led the field in the “Big Cap” for 1/2 the race then faded as she tired, finishing next to last. She’s definitly a horse that needs/loves a few hard works before a race.
Well, the wait for race results was worth it!
Two of our starts proved that they’re probably ready for the broodmare barn…
Dr. Sweetie finished 9th/14 in her SC stakes. I don’t think she likes running against the boys, but I’m not sure that there are enough F/M SC stakes to keep her running. Maybe one more try.
Spell Breaker finished 9th/10 in her stakes… she likes everything but maybe her equipment got confused on the way to the track, I don’t remember planning an equipment change (though I possibly just did it accidentally, oops). Again, maybe worth another shot, we’ll see what the next race that looks good for her is.
And finally, the actual highlight of the day, Express Yourself, broke well and fought off the competition to take the Santa Anita Handicap, proving he’s not just a turf horse. He’s now 3(3)-2(2)-1(1)-0-0 for the year and is close to the million dollar earnings mark for the year already. I love this horse 
. We’ll try to run him more on dirt this year in the interest of rounding out his stud qualifications.