Racing

Sweet Treasure Wins Wednesday’s Featured Mineola Purse at Keeneland

Full of Run Racing II and Frank Silva’s Sweet Treasure found room along the inside in the stretch and spurted clear to post a 1 1/4-length victory in the $140,000 Mineola Purse for fillies and mares Wednesday afternoon at Keeneland. (Click here for a video of the race.)

Trained by Brad Cox and ridden by Irad Ortiz Jr., Sweet Treasure completed the mile and a sixteenth over a firm turf course in 1:42.47. It was the third win of the afternoon for Ortiz.

In the race preceding the Mineola, Cox notched his 200th Keeneland victory when LNJ Foxwoods’ Rothko took an allowance test by 4¾ lengths under Ortiz. Cox is the eighth trainer to achieve the 200-win milestone.

Sweet Treasure is a 4-year-old Kentucky-bred daughter of Twirling Candy out of the Empire Maker mare Stellium. In her previous race, she was third in the Albert M. Stall Memorial (L) at Fair Grounds behind Expensive Queen (IRE) and Medoro. Expensive Queen and Medoro were the first- and third-place finishers in last Saturday’s Jenny Wiley (G1) here.

Now 8-4-0-2 in her career, Sweet Treasure increased her earnings to $285,738.

Sweet Treasure returned $7.38, $4.50 and $3.30. Smiling Ellie returned $12.48 and $7.30 under Jose Ortiz and finished three-quarters of a length in front of She’s Lookin Lucky, who paid $4.32 to show under John Velazquez.

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Racing continues Thursday with a nine-race program beginning at 1 p.m. ET