Sidney's Candy earns sweet score in San Vicente

The Craig Family Trust's homebred SIDNEY'S CANDY (Candy Ride [Arg]) moved to

the front soon after the gates opened on Monday's $150,000

San

Vicente S. (G2) at Santa Anita and was never headed en route to a 4

1/4-length victory under jockey Joe Talamo.

"I was confident he'd bounce back with a good effort today," Talamo said.

"(Trainer) John (Sadler) told me to just get a good start and go from there. At

the three-eighths I just kind of clucked to him and he got right into the

bridle.

"They've done a great job with this horse. I just basically sat on him today

and I couldn't believe that final time, that's awesome. It's very exciting to

have a horse of this caliber."

Sent off the 2-1 favorite in the seven-horse field, Sidney's Candy posted

splits of :22 3/5, :45 2/5 and 1:08 3/5 before running away in the stretch to

finish in 1:20 4/5 for seven furlongs on the Pro-Ride. He paid $6.20, $3.60 and

$2.40 while keying the $12.10 exacta ($1) and $55.30 trifecta ($1).

Tiny Woods (Roman Ruler) tracked in second throughout and held that spot on

the wire by 1 3/4 lengths over Classical Slew (Bernstein) to return $3.80 and

$2.60 at 3-1. Classical Slew stayed within striking range on the backstretch but

was outrun in the stretch, giving back $4 as the 8-1 fifth pick. Runaway Bandido

(Runaway Groom), the 20-1 second longest shot on the board, ended the 3-5-4-7

superfecta ($1) that totaled $347.40.

Quiet Invader (Songandaprayer), Gilligan (Grand Reward) and Raging Wit

(Distorted Humor) completed the order under the wire.

Sidney's Candy just missed by a head in his career debut at Del Mar in late

July, but easily broke through with a first win with a four-length victory back

at that track one month later in track-record time of 1:02.71 for 5 1/2

furlongs. He ran an uncharacteristic fourth in his three-year-old bow in an

allowance won by Tiny Woods, but easily avenged that loss here while moving his

record to 4-2-1-0 and increasing his earnings to $133,560.

"In his last start, he had been off four or five months, he was a little

heavy and he didn't break," Sadler explained. "He's kind of a free-running

horse, so when he got out of his game the other day it didn't surprise me that

he didn't run well. We want him to do what he does, which is kind of bouncing

around a little bit with some natural speed. Once I saw him get rhythmic today I

knew we were going to be fine. The plan today was to get him back on the lead.

"I don't know what's next yet. We're going to look at all the different

races. The reason I didn't want to go into an allowance race is because of the

graded earnings for the big stuff (Kentucky Derby [G1]). He'll be going around

two turns next time, that's for sure. Which one of those races it is, we don't

know yet."

The Kentucky-bred chestnut is out of the Storm Cat mare Fair Exchange, who is

the only registered foal produced by multiple Grade 1 heroine Exchange (Explodent).