Gamine with her drug positives (permitted therapeutic meds not allowed on race day) is a flashpoint for controversy, but let's just put that aside for a moment, because this is a great filly. She not only kept up with Serengeti Empress's blasting Filly and Mare Sprint pace - 21.77 and 44.27 -- but she did so while well in hand, and when John Velazquez asked Gamine to go get the leader at the three-sixteenths pole, it was all over very quickly. Winning margin - 6 1/4 lengths. Winning time - 1:20.20.

The time, really, is too fast. A horse isn't supposed to break a track record at this distance by 1.12 seconds, and it's a shame the surface has been jacked up to produce such fast times.

Leaving that alone, too, because time aside, Gamine clearly was brilliant today. Serengeti Empress was hard sent to lead, and Gamine had to switch out and chase, but anyone who thought that would bother her was dead wrong. She was every bit as powerful as in her front-running Acorn and Test wins, and Gamine surely is one of the best 3-year-old filly sprinter-milers in quite some time. Test, Acorn, 3rds in the Oaks, smashing BC F & M Sprint win - we'll have to see how that stacks up against divisional rival Swiss Skydiver after the Distaff later today.