‘Elizabeth’ gets her own ‘Way’ in The Very One at Gulfstream

John McCormack’s Elizabeth Way remained undefeated in two starts in the U.S. Saturday at Gulfstream Park after registering a front-running victory in the Grade 3, $150,000 The Very One Stakes.

The The Very One, a 1 3/16-mile turf race for older fillies and mares, was one of 10 stakes, including nine graded stakes, worth $1.95 million on Saturday’s fantastic 14-race program that concluded with the running of the $400,000 Fasig-Tipton Fountain of Youth (G2), a key prep for the $1 million Curlin Florida Derby (G1) March 28.

Elizabeth Way ($30.80), who was winless in five starts in Ireland, had previously won her first career race with an off-the pace score in a 1 1/16-mile maiden special weight race at Gulfstream Jan. 18.

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The royally bred 4-year-old daughter of Frankel, who is trained by Roger Attfield, employed opposite tactics Saturday, quickly establishing the lead on the front-stretch on her way to setting fractions of 23,76 and 48.9 seconds for the first half-mile with only mild pressure to her outside by English Affair. The Irish-bred filly continued to show the way around the far turn before heavy pressure developed behind her on the turn into the homestretch. Although her pursuers were in full flight in the stretch, Elizabeth Way was able to kick away to score by 1 ¼ lengths.

La Signare finished second under Tyler Gaffalione, a neck ahead of Romantic Pursuit and Joe Bravo.

Elizabeth Way ran 1 3/16 miles over a firm turf course in 1:54.25.

“The plan was to just let her run her race; it was as simple as that,” winning trainer Roger Attfield said later.”The gentleman that owns the horse [John McCormack] was really keen to do this and I still think that she’s going to be better as she goes farther. When she popped out of there, we were just hoping that maybe she could get some black type. She’s been training super well the last 10 days, so it didn’t really surprise me that she’d run really well, but I didn’t think she’d do it all the way on the lead.”