NEWS
Veteran Evening Attire wins second Queens County
Posted: Saturday, December 08, 2007 6:08 PM
EVENING ATTIRE
Adam Coglianese/NYRA photo
by Ron Parker
Nine-year-old Evening Attire made his 63rd lifetime start a winning one Saturday as the venerable Black Tie Affair (Ire) gelding caught front-running Barcola at the wire to win the $104,900 Queens County Handicap (G3) at Aqueduct.
Mary and Joseph Grant’s and Thomas Kelly’s homebred Evening Attire was making his fifth appearance in the Queens County, winning the 2001 edition before finishing second in ’03 and ’04, and fourth in ’05.
Barcola was quickest out of the gate in the 1 3/16-mile contest. Evening Attire, who has a habit of breaking slowly from inside posts, made no exception to this practice as he broke last in the six-horse field.
Jockey Edgar Prado angled Evening Attire over toward the rail as he settled into fourth position, ahead of 1.95-to-1 favorite Hunting as Barcola maintained a comfortable lead with reasonable fractions of :48.38 for a half-mile and 1:12.74 for six-furlongs.
Nearing, the far turn Prado edged Evening Attire out for clear sailing and they began a sustained move that carried down the stretch as they slowly closed the gap, finally catching Barcola in the shadow of the wire for a head victory.
“He knows his way around the track,” Prado said. “When he’s right, he’s pretty tough. When he moved at the half-mile pole, I wasn’t even riding him which made me feel good. He needed some [extra] warming up, as does everyone who’s getting older.”
Evening Attire finished in 1:58.02 over the fast track while Barcola was three lengths clear of third-place finisher Hunting.
“It’s always neat when he wins,” trainer Pat Kelly said. “He’s always broken a step slow, it started when he was two.”
The victory snapped a nine-race losing skid for Evening Attire. All but one of those defeats came at distances less than 1 3/16 miles.
“The distance is good for him, he’ll just wear them down,” Kelly said. “He’s competitive in races I never dreamed he’d be in at this age.”
The win marked the ninth graded stakes victory among ten stakes wins for Evening Attire, who increased his earnings to $2,749,894. Overall, he has won 14 of 63 career starts.
Although he will be a ten-year-old in a few weeks, there are no plans for retirement, something the owners tried last year only to learn that Evening Attire wanted no part of being away from the track.
“If there’s racing next year we’ll be here,” Kelly said. “I don’t know what else we’d do with him.”
Evening Attire is out of the Our Native mare Concolour.
For an Equibase chart, click here.
Ron Parker is a Thoroughbred Times contributing writer
