Double Ante and Bwanadana: sneaky-good pedigrees, and a 58-1 stablemate beating a 7-2 one

I wrote a blog recently about lightly regarded stablemates getting the better of their fellow trainee. I don't know what Mike Mitchell expected, but an extreme example was in evidence from the public's point of view Wednesday when Mitchell's 58-1 Bwanadana came in 3rd, a couple of places better than 7-2 Mitchell firster Point Cadet in the 5th race at Del Mar. The race was for fillies and mares. Point Cadet is half sister to Point Given, by Distorted Humor, and cost $875,000 as a yearling. Bwanadana is by Bwana Charlie, who has hardly attained prominence. But on the female side, she certainly has a license, as half-sister Kilograeme went "maiden win, allowance win" as a 3-year-old at Santa Anita to begin her career before running 4th of 5 in the Santa Anita Oaks and not returning again. Dam K. O. Princess is also half sister to K. O. Punch, an outstanding 2-year-old in 1997 who kept "who's who" company. They don't make 2-year-olds like K. O. Punch any more, or maybe they just don't make D. Wayne Lukas any more.

Interestingly, Point Cadet had been drilled seriously for her debut (in other words, quickly), while Bwanadana had not, despite the common trainer. None of the recent works matched up by day and distance, however. There wasn't evidence that Point Cadet had been directly outworking Bwanadana, in other words.

Longshots defying their odds was the rule of the day, as My Dark Vada won at 40-1 in race 8. In the Bwanadana/Point Cadet race, 47-1 firster Double Ante not only won, but gave a promising performance. She broke slowly and seemingly a bit in the air to be 10th by 11 lengths after a quarter mile. Then, other than cases of bolting on the turn, she ran about as wide as I have seen an eventual winner run. But she was up to the task and full of run, getting up by a length and a quarter. The time wasn't even half bad. Even though Double Ante's dam, Deux Anes (GB), had produced the talented grade III-winning turfer Makeup Artist, at age 21 she wasn't going to be bred to Dynaformer again, but to a son with a much lower stud fee whose race record could be picked apart. So Double Ante is by Purim. Although Double Ante wouldn't have been included in my debut-winner study had I used this year's maidens since the race was for 3-year-olds and up, note that the pattern of a "behinder" winner paying an excitingly-high mutuel was duplicated.

Bouns points if in the title of the post you can figure out the pedigree connection to the thoroughly-discussed race 5 at Del Mar....