BY BROCK SHERIDAN
Holiday Pay raced on the rail behind longshots Spenard and What a Dude through four furlongs then went three-wide in the second turn to take the lead and win the $65,000 Winsham Lad Stakes at Sunland Park Monday. Nine 4-year-olds and older went a mile as Florida-bred Holiday Pay earned his first stakes victory with Luis Valenzuela in the saddle.
Holiday Pay broke from post four then navigated to the rail around the first turn as Spenard and What a Dude were heads apart through a quarter mile in :24.67 and the half mile in :47.60. Valenzuela steered Holiday pay to the outside three furlongs out and had little trouble urging the 5-year-old gelding to the front at the top of the stretch. He increased his margin to a length-and-a-half under the wire in 1:36.86 with even-money favorite Cornishman coming from sixth to earn second. Bender was another two lengths farther back in third followed by Spenard, Ze’bul, Mine That Star, What a Dude, Piney Bluff and Compelling Uncle. Bearings was scratched.
Trained by Justin Evans, Holiday Pay paid $11.20 to win.
Second to Mine That Star as the beaten favorite last out in a one-mile allowance race at Sunland on January 12, Holiday Pay was making his third start for Evans and the ownership team of Leslie A. and Jean Pierre Amestoy Jr., and Roger K. Beasley. The Amestoys and Beasley purchased Holiday Pay for $55,000 out of the 2025 Fasig-Tipton October Digital Sale. In his first start for the new connections on November 25, he was seventh in the $100,000 Zia Park Championship won by Heroic Move with Ze’Bul second and Cornishman third.
His most recent win came at Colonial Downs in July against second condition, $50,000 optional claimers going a mile-and-a-sixteenth.
In winning the Winsham Lad, 5-year-old Holiday Pay earned $39,000 to boost his career bankroll to $252,560. He now has six wins, four seconds and three thirds in 18 lifetime starts.
Holiday Pay is by Ocala Stud stallion Awesome Slew out of Dreaminofauntantil, by Michael Lewis and was bred in Florida by Amalio Ruiz Lozano. Lozano will recieve a $4,000 FTBOA Export Incentive for the out-of-state stakes victory by Holiday Pay.
He sold for $62,000 to Calypso Stables at the 2022 Ocala Breeders’ Sales October Yearling Sale where he was consigned by Lisa McGreevy’s Abbie Road Farm.
Return to the February 10 issue of Wire to Wire
