On Saturday afternoon at Charles Town, an odds-on favorite with a big fan base went to the gate. She was expected to be an easy winner; after all, she’d won eight in a row, and 14 of her last 15. Her lone loss in that stretch came at Mountaineer, one of only four starts in a 41-race career away from her home track, at which she was making her first start of 2015.

Instead, just a few furlongs into the race, at the track at which she’d seen her greatest triumphs—all but one of her 25 wins, two in the West Virginia Cavada Breeders’ Classic; three straight wins in the Sadie Hawkins; back-to-back victories against males at two in the Tri State Futurity and the West Virginia Futurity—jockey Erik Ramirez pulled Down Town Allen up, not without some difficulty, the 8-year-old mare trying to run on even as he tried to slow her down, the dreams of a third consecutive win in the Original Gold stopped dead on the Charles Town backstretch.

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Photo:  Russell Road romps in the Confucius Say