Sweet Azteca © Benoit Photo
There are many things about Del Mar you can count on. The sun will be shining, the racing will be exciting and Sweet Azteca will make her annual appearance in the G3 Rancho Bernardo.
The smart looking gray or roan mare by Sharp Azteca has won the past two runnings of the Rancho Bernardo, a six and a half-furlong sprint on the main track, and she’s back in 2026 for a third go-round. She’s won eight of her 10 career starts and her last three in a row.
“She’s a lot fresher,” trainer Richard Baltas says. “She’s only had one race (this year). She had a lot of time off and she’s doing really well.”
Her three-race winning streak started last year when she won the G2 Great Lady M at Los Alamitos for the second year in a row. She followed that with her second consecutive victory in the Rancho Bernardo, wiring the field and winning by 3 ½ easy lengths. She was the favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint but got scratched the day of the race and didn’t race again until last month when she returned to win her third Great Lady M.
She’ll be attempting to win her third straight Rancho Bernardo Sunday.
“If she’s right, she doesn’t lose,” Baltas states. “That’s why I gave her four months off this year. I think she’ll be a lot better than the Los Alamitos race because she’s a much fitter horse now.”
That’s bad news for the other five horses who have chosen to take on Sweet Azteca in the Rancho Bernardo, including her stablemate, Sweet Gal of Mine, who has been sprinting on the turf in her last six races.
Two of the contenders are out of the John Sadler barn. Catalina Cocktail, who scratched out of the CTT and TOC Stakes Saturday to run in the Rancho Bernardo, and Thermal, a speedball by Nyquist. She won the Memorial Day Sprint at Lone Star Park by 8 ¼ lengths.
“She went over to Texas and ran a fantastic race,” Sadler comments. “Had a big high Beyer and so we tried to give her enough spacing, not to run her back too quick. She’s training great here. Looks pretty much like a two-horse race.”
Sadler has won the Rancho Bernardo seven times. Three times in a row in the late nineties with Track Gal and back-to-back in 2021 and ’22 with Edgeway.
Looking to pull off the upset or, at the very least, to get a piece of the pie, are Antifona, a French-bred who ran third in the G3 Wilshire at Santa Anita in March and Fire Ban, who was a career oh-for-11 when she returned to Del Mar and promptly broke her maiden in an entry level allowance race on July 24.
The 55th running of the G3 Rancho Bernardo is Race 5 on the 10-race Sunday card. Probable post time is 4 p.m.
Here’s the field from the rail with the jockeys and morning line odds: Thermal (Joel Rosario, 6/5); Catalina Cocktail (Emisael Jaramillo, 20-1); Antifona (Kent Desormeaux, 20-1); Fire Ban (Armando Ayuso, 12-1); Sweet Azteca (Juan Hernandez, 4/5), and Sweet Gal of Mine (Mike Smith, 12-1).