Bonny South Prevails in Three-Horse Photo to Win Baird Doubledogdare

Juddmonte’s homebred Bonny South outdueled Royal Flag and Graceful Princess through a three-way stretch battle to win the 26^th running of the $100,000 Baird Doubledogdare (G3) for fillies and mares on a sun-splashed Friday afternoon. 

Trained by Brad Cox and ridden by Florent Geroux, Bonny South covered the 1 1/16 miles on a fast main track in 1:43.46. 

Graceful Princess set the pace with Speech tracking in second through fractions of :24.11 and :48.02. Entering the far turn, Bonny South began to move to the outside of Graceful Princess with Royal Flag moving right behind her. 

Bonny South stuck her head in front at the eighth pole and refused to yield to the late bid from Royal Flag to claim the victory. 

The victory was worth $60,000 and increased Bonny South’s earnings to $592,150 with a record of 9-4-3-0 with two graded stakes victories. Bonny South is a 4-year-old Kentucky-bred daughter of Munnings out of the Tapit mare Touch the Star. 

Bonny South returned $9.40, $4.20 and $3.20. Royal Flag, ridden by Joel Rosario, returned $3.60 and $2.80 with Graceful Princess finishing another head back in third under Luis Saez and returning $4.40 to show. 

It was another 4½ lengths back to Eres Tu, who was followed in order by High Regard and favored Speech. 

Racing continues Saturday afternoon with a 10-race program beginning at 1:05 p.m. and featuring the $200,000 Elkhorn (G2) for older horses going 1½ miles on the turf. The Elkhorn will be the afternoon’s ninth race with a 5:30 p.m. post time.