ERIE – Puer­to Ri­can jock­ey Edgard Za­yas took 5-1 choice Ac­com­plished Girl gate-to-wire in style, to hand Bar­ba­di­an train­er Saffie Joseph Jr suc­cess in the Grade 2 US$300 000 Presque Isle Downs Mas­ters Stakes in Penn­syl­va­nia on Mon­day.

Go­ing 6-1/2 fur­longs in the fea­ture on the nine-race card, Za­yas car­ried the three-year-old chest­nut fil­ly to the wire in a three-quar­ter length score over the three-year-old and up­ward fil­lies and mares, re­turn­ing a time of one minute, 15:29 sec­onds.

Four-to-win bet Mid­night Stroll was sec­ond with 3-1 choice Maris­sa’s La­dy a head back in third.

“She was amaz­ing to­day (Mon­day). She broke out of there run­ning. As soon as she got to the lead, her ears went up and was great the rest of the way,” said Za­yas, who has formed a suc­cess­ful al­liance with Joseph in re­cent years.

“She kept dig­ging in late when the fil­lies start­ed to come to her. I think the eas­i­er first quar­ter-mile helped her late.”

Za­yas broke the fil­ly on top to pro­duce frac­tions of 23.30 sec­onds for the quar­ter and 45.99 for the half, with Maris­sa’s La­dy and favourite Loy­al­ty in pur­suit, and Jill Jit­ter­bug just off the pace.

When the pace quick­ened as the race turned for home, Za­yas kept Ac­com­plished Girl to task, fend­ing off chal­lenges first from Loy­al­ty and then from Mid­night Stroll, who came late with a fly­ing run on the out­side.

CMC