Cal-bred News

There’s Somethinaboutlaura In Sunshine Millions

ARCADIA, Calif. (Jan. 20, 2007) -- Shortly after she’d won the Foster City Handicap by eight lengths at Bay Meadows on Feb 4, 2006, Somethinaboutlaura was consigned to the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Winter Mixed Sale.

“We thought she would be sold as a broodmare,” recalls Allen Lilley of Tracy, Calif., who with his wife, Toni, bred the chestnut daughter of Dance Floor, out of the It’s Freezing mare Crystals of Ice.

Bought back for $395,000, almost immediately after the sale, Bluegrass Thoroughbred Services bought her privately for $375,000 -- and turned her over to trainer Jerry Hollendorfer.
“We were thrilled when that happened because that meant she would keep racing and would stay in California where we could see her race,” says Lilley, who sold Somethinaboutlaura as a weanling to Phil Rowe for an undisclosed amount.

Somethinaboutlaura has given the Lilleys something to see. Under Hollendorfer’s care, she has won four of her 10 starts, finished second four times and third once.

Overall, she won five races—all of them stakes—in 2006 and recorded her first graded stakes success in the Grade II, $150,000 A Gleam Invitational Handicap run over seven furlongs at Hollywood Park last July 1.

With 10 victories in 20 career starts and $560,770 in purse earnings, the 5-year-old mare looms the California’s best hope in the $500,000 Sunshine Millions Distaff at Santa Anita Park on Jan. 27.

The $3.6 million, eight-race Sunshine Millions series for California- and Florida-breds is being contested for the fifth time at Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park.

The Sunshine Millions Distaff is run at 1 1/16 miles, the same distance as the Cal Cup Matron, which Somethinaboutlaura won by 4 ½ lengths over Yearly Attitude on Oct. 28 in her only previous start at Santa Anita.

“I think she’s best at seven furlongs or a mile,” Lilley says. “But she’s got the class to win going longer.”

“I didn’t know if she liked sprints or routes better when I got her,” Hollendorfer says. “I did find out she liked her works between races to be less strenuous.”

Hollendorfer owns a minority interest in Somethinaboutlaura, whose principal owners are Kentucky breeder John Sikura, Californian Chuck Miller and Dr. George Todaro, a medical researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Previously trained by Chuck Perry and Steve Miyadi, Somethinaboutlaura debuted at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club on Aug. 16, 2004, running last in a field of 11 going 5 ½ furlomgs, beaten 23 lengths in $40,000 maiden claiming company.

When she became a graded-stakes winner in the A Gleam last year, Somethinaboutlaura prevailed by a nose after a furious stretch-long battle with Maryfield. She put her nose in front about 100 yards from the wire.

Watching the race on television from their home in Tracy, near Stockton, Allen and Toni Lilley celebrated noisily.

“We were yelling so loud, our neighbors must have thought there was a domestic dispute,” Lilley says with a laugh.
-- Larry Bortstein