Making his stakes debut for trainer Phil D\u2019Amato, Innovative roared through the stretch and surged past stubborn pacesetter Lee\u2019s Baby Girl to win Saturday\u2019s Grade 3, $100,000 John C. Harris Stakes for 3-year-old fillies sprinting about 6 \u00bd furlongs on the hillside turf course at Santa Anita in Arcadia, Calif.<\/p>\n
Innovative (12-1), with a resurgent Ricky Gonzalez aboard, prevailed by a neck over Lee\u2019s Baby Girl (25-1) with another half length back to morning-line favorite Warming (9-2) in third. Casalu, the even money post-time favorite, ranged into contention in the final furlong but flattened out late.<\/p>\n
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Lee\u2019s Baby Girl, with Mirco Demuro up for trainer Carla Gaines, set fractions of :22.23, :44.37 and 1:06.77. With a host of rivals looking poised to sweep past her in the final furlong, Lee\u2019s Baby Girl dug in gamely but could not hold off the late charge of Innovative who won in a time of 1:12.98.<\/p>\n
Trained by Phil D\u2019Amato, the daughter of Complexity previously won a first-level allowance going a mile at Del Mar on Aug. 9 in what was her sixth start. D\u2019Amato said this race was designed as a prep for the G3 Autum Miss at a mile on turf on Oct. 26 at Santa Anita.<\/p>\n
\u201c<\/strong>I was really impressed with my filly in the last race at Del Mar. I think the light bulb went on for her there,\u201d D\u2019Amato said. \u201cI looked at the race and thought this would be a good option for her at Santa Anita to set her up for the two-turn stake at the end of the meet. She came flying home on the outside and mowed them down. She\u2019s a filly with a lot of promise.\u201d<\/p>\n Innovative is owned by Little Red Feather Racing and Sterling Stables. Four races earlier on the card, Little Red Feather and Sterling Stables teamed with D\u2019Amato to win the G2 John Henry Turf Championship with Gold Phoenix.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cCredit to the whole D\u2019Amato team. Gold Phoenix and Innovative, it has been a great job,\u201d said Little Red Feather\u2019s Billy Koch \u201cTo all the Little Red Feather partners watching it is just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n Innovative improved to 7: 3-2-1 with $178,300 in earnings. She paid $27.40, $11.80 and $5.60. Lee\u2019s Baby Girl returned $18.20 and $6.00. Warming, ridden by Umberto Rispoli for trainer Graham Motion, paid $4.20.<\/p>\n Live racing resumes Sunday at Santa Anita with a 10-race card starting at 1 p.m. PT. The program features the G2 Santa Anita Sprint Championship and G2 Zenyatta, both automatic qualifiers to the Breeders\u2019 Cup.<\/p>\n This story was originally reported by Paulick Report<\/a> on Sep 28, 2025, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Paulick Report as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Making his stakes debut for trainer Phil D\u2019Amato, Innovative roared through the stretch and surged past stubborn pacesetter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[95382,150652,1071,48294,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-457262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-innovative","9":"tag-phil-damato","10":"tag-racing","11":"tag-santa-anita","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115280578117627781","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}