CYPRESS — Sweet Azteca topped not one but two outstanding female sprinters when the 5-year-old mare won the strongest race of Los Alamitos’ early-summer thoroughbred season on Saturday.
She outran Kopion, who came into the $200,000, Grade II Great Lady M. Stakes as the division leader and the bettors’ 1-5 favorite in a field of six fillies and mares.
She also outdid herself, covering 6½ furlongs on Los Al’s dirt oval in a track-record 1:14.32 – one one-hundredth of a second faster than the mark she set in winning the Great Lady M. last year.
“On the gallop-out, I heard the announcer say something about (the record),” jockey Juan Hernandez said in the winner’s circle. “I didn’t know if I was close (to the record) or if she broke it again. Then I saw that time and I was like, ‘Man, she’s a super filly.’“
Sweet Azteca, a gray 5-year-old mare, paid $9 as the 7-2 second choice on the tote board after leading from starting gate to finish line.
Kopion and jockey Kazushi Kimura were second all the way and finished 1½ lengths behind the winner and two lengths ahead of third-place Chismosa and Kyle Frey. Kimura had to swerve to the inside for the stretch run after Hernandez let Sweet Azteca float wide turning into the stretch. No objection was lodged, and Hernandez’s maneuver wasn’t why Sweet Azteca won.
Kopion’s trainer, Richard Mandella, gave credit to the winner after talking with Kimura following the race.
“He said she did everything right and ran hard,” Mandella told Steve Andersen of the Daily Racing Form. “The other filly is a good filly.”
Most of the attention before the race had gone to Kopion, a 4-year-old filly who came in with three memorable 7-furlong stakes wins in a row: a 37-1 upset in the La Brea at Santa Anita in December, a swift runaway in the Santa Monica at Santa Anita in February and a rally to a mild upset in the Derby City Distaff on Kentucky Derby day at Churchill Downs in May.
Even Sweet Azteca’s trainer, Richard Baltas, conceded the focus on Kopion was “100%” deserved.
But Baltas said he’d been “95%” confident of Sweet Azteca’s chances.
“One thing my filly had over his was that she had a race over the track, the track record here, so obviously she likes the surface,” Baltas said. “Maybe we were just a little bit better today than (Kopion).”
It was the first start of 2025 and the first in Baltas’ name for Sweet Azteca, who’d been transferred by owner Pamela Ziebarth from Michael McCarthy’s barn while she was laid off following a fourth-place finish at 1-10 odds in the Chillingworth Stakes at Santa Anita in October.
Baltas called the win a relief.
“You get a horse from another trainer, and the horse has done so well, everybody has expectations. You have to keep it together. You have pressure on you,” said Baltas, who’d had to skip an earlier comeback option in June after Sweet Azteca suffered a cut on a leg.
“What if she runs bad?”
That fear went unrealized. The towering Sweet Azteca snapped right back to the form that carried her to four straight wins at one point in 2024, including the Grade I Beholder Mile at Santa Anita and that year’s Great Lady M. Stakes.
“I think she won the race out of the gate,” said Hernandez, who let Sweet Hernandez set quarter-mile fractions of 21.95 and 43.87 seconds, similar to a year earlier. “I think Richie did a great job with her, bringing her to the race great.”
Baltas said he could consider running Sweet Azteca next in the Aug. 23 Ballerina at Saratoga, and his ultimate goal is the Nov. 1 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Del Mar.
The Great Lady M. was the highlight of the three-week Los Alamitos thoroughbred meet that ends Sunday.
The jockey and trainer standings are close going into the nine-race closing day. Kimura leads Diego Herrera, 10 wins to 8. Steve Knapp leads Peter Miller, 6-5.
It’s hard to beat Hernandez’s Los Al season, though. He won all three stakes, riding Kings River Knight in the Bertrando Stakes and Nevada Beach in the Los Alamitos Derby before Sweet Azteca on Saturday.
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