Got Koko Gets Two Legs Up

Got Koko is an angular filly who has a white stocking on her left foreleg and a white blaze that looks a little like a heart on her forehead.

“I think [the blaze] looks like a lightning rod,” trainer Bruce Headley said after he had saddled Got Koko for a 1 1/2-length win Sunday in the $150,000 El Encino Stakes at Santa Anita. Got Koko also won the La Brea on Dec. 28 and is within one victory -- in the La Canada on Feb. 8 -- of sweeping Santa Anita’s three-race series for 4-year-old fillies. Only two horses, Taisez Vous in 1978 and Mitterand in 1985, have swept since the La Canada series was introduced in 1975.

Got Koko, owned by Headley in a partnership with restaurateur Paul Leung of San Gabriel, is another of those bargain-basement yearlings that have a way of showing up at Headley’s barn and going on to exceptional careers. Got Koko, a $30,000 purchase, is, according to Headley, one of only three Texas-breds to win a Grade I race. Kona Gold, bought for $35,000, was champion sprinter in 2000, has earned $2.2 million and is still winning as a 9-year-old, and Son Of A Pistol, whom Headley bought for $23,000, earned more than $800,000.

“I didn’t know about buying Got Koko because of the Texas thing,” Headley said. “But there were horses [at Keeneland in 2000] selling for a couple of hundred thousand dollars apiece, and then she came along. I bought her on her looks.”

Alex Solis, Kona Gold’s regular rider, rode Got Koko to her fifth win in nine starts. The filly paid $8.40 to win Sunday, going off at 17-1 as the third choice in a field of eight. Favored Bella Bellucci made a late run to take second place, finishing three lengths ahead of Bare Necessities. Running 1 1/16 miles in 1:42 1/5, fastest time for the stake since 1997, Got Koko, third after six furlongs, earned $90,000 to run her career total to $332,946.

“I had to move earlier than I wanted to on the second turn,” Solis said, “because she was five or six [lanes] wide and I didn’t want to give her that much to do. This filly keeps surprising people, but I don’t know why it’s such a surprise. [The Torrey Pines, her first stakes win] at Del Mar last summer was a great race. She doesn’t quit.”

Headley noted that Got Koko was wide on the first turn as well.

“I think she’s the first horse I’ve ever had who was five or six wide on both turns and then still showed a strong kick in the stretch,” Headley said.

Bella Bellucci, ridden by Mike Smith, was third in the 2001 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies and went into the El Encino with five wins in nine starts. She ran fourth in the La Brea.

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At Gulfstream Park, where Offlee Wild was 27-1 in winning Saturday’s Holy Bull Stakes, another longshot struck when Riddlesdown, an Irish-bred whose only previous U.S. stakes win came via a disqualification, won the $100,000 Mac Diarmida Handicap by 1 1/2 lengths. Riddlesdown, owned by Gary Tanaka, trained by Niall O’Callaghan and ridden by Roger Velez, led all the way to pay $61.60.