by Jeff Apel

Cowgirls Don’t Cry set a comfortable pace and earned her first graded stakes victory with a 2 1/4-length win in the $150,000 Shuvee Handicap (G2) on Saturday at Belmont Park.

The win left veteran jockey Mike Luzzi one victory away from earning his 3,000th career win. Luzzi reached the milestone in the tenth and final race on Saturday’s card aboard Too Tough Pete.

Sent off as the fourth choice at 10.20-to-1 odds in a field of six fillies and mares, Cowgirls Don’t Cry was positioned near the rail at the start. The Pure Prize filly led by one length through a half-mile in :47.67 and six furlongs in 1:12.55.

Kicking clear on the turn, Cowgirls Don’t Cry opened a three-length lead in early stretch and won the one-mile race in 1:37.31 on a track rated as fast.

Multiple Grade 2 winner Rite Moment finished second, 2 3/4 lengths in front of Grade 3 winner Wow Me Free.

Kiaran McLaughlin trains both Cowgirls Don’t Cry and Wow Me Free.

Jeff Singer’s Cowgirls Don’t Cry entered off a third-place finish to Rite Moment in the Bed o’ Roses Handicap (G2) on April 19 at Aqueduct. Cowgirls Don’t Cry posted her first stakes win in the 2006 Anna M. Fisher Debutante Stakes at Ellis Park.

Cowgirls Don’t Cry increased her earnings to $212,702 with four wins in eight starts. Bred in Kentucky, Cowgirls Don’t Cry is out of Emphatic Style, by Crafty Prospector.

For an Equibase chart, click here.

Jeff Apel is a Thoroughbred Times assistant daily news editor