HORSE RACING ALABAMA STAKES : Go For Wand Waves Away Any Last Doubts

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. —  Once and for all, the issue is decided. Horse for horse and for as long as they both shall live, Go For Wand is a better filly than Charon.

Go for Wand was a better filly when they met at Keeneland in the 1 1/16-mile Ashland Stakes in April; a better filly in June, when they met at Belmont Park in the Mother Goose Stakes; and a better filly by far in a one-mile, $217,600 Alabama Stakes that was essentially a match race Saturday at Saratoga Race Course.

No other filly has beaten Charon, whose superiority over the remainder of the 3-year-old filly division was illustrated by her nine-length victory last month in the Coaching Club American Oaks, from which Go For Wand was absent because of illness. The third starter Saturday, Pampered Star, won the Monmouth Oaks in her last start but was eased some 48 lengths behind Charon in the Alabama.

Go For Wand, it appears, will be perpetually in front of Charon, and Go For Wand barely broke a sweat Saturday.

As Go For Wand cruised effortlessly down the backstretch, Charon’s rider, Craig Perret, found it necessary to offer encouragement while doing little more than maintaining contact in the run down the backstretch. Randy Romero crouched motionless for more than a mile upon the broad-chested, thickly muscled Go For Wand before he allowed her to run approaching the three-sixteenths pole. When he did, she widened the margin to seven lengths with a burst of speed and lowered Love Sign’s decade-old stakes record in the 110-year-old Alabama.

Go For Wand set a moderate pace while under restraint, leading Charon in fractions of :24, :48 1/5 and 1:11 2/5 for six furlongs. She arrived at the quarter pole in 1:36 with Charon still in pursuit two lengths back. Charon would get no closer, however. Go For Wand, still under restraint leaving the quarter pole, was at the wire in 2:00 4/5 on a good track, a fifth of a second faster than the stakes record and less than a second off General Assembly’s course record for 10 furlongs, set in 1979.