LRL: Late Nite Call answered in allowance
Filly snaps losing streak with valiant front-running score
Frank Vespe
March 28, 2026
“She’s tough,” trainer Niall Saville said of Late Nite Call after Saturday’s fourth race at Laurel Park. “She likes to be put in a battle.”
Good thing. The four-year-old Audible filly emerged unscathed from a lengthy duel, rebuffed the challenges of the closers, and went on to win the second-level allowance/optional claimer by 1 ¼ lengths. Running time for the 1 1/16 miles on a fast main track was 1:48.65.
This article contains affiliate links. If you click and buy, we may earn a commission at no extra charge to you.
Pick up reliable and rewarding tickets for major events!
It was Late Nite Call’s third win from 13 career starts and pushed her bankroll to $167,890.
Under jockey Xavier Perez and breaking from the rail, Late Nite Call showed her characteristic early zip but was immediately confronted by Girvinized, who angled sharply down from the outside post. Those two sped through an opening quarter-mile in 23.36 seconds and a half in 47.03, by which time they had put 10 lengths between themselves and their three rivals.
“When it comes to our riders and we say, ‘Go forward,’ I will always back them to the hilt to go,” Saville said. “Keep going.”
Late Nite Call shook free of Girvinized midway on the far turn, but by then, the others – the Tim Keefe trainees The Goddess Factor and Too Many Kisses and Ferris Allen’s Navani – were revving up their runs. In the lane, however, Late Nite Call kept finding more while drifting out under a left-handed stick.
Late Nite Call remained clear to the wire, with The Goddess Factor and Too Many Kisses filling out the trifecta. Angel Cruz, rider of The Goddess Factor, lodged an objection against Perez and Late Nite Call for drifting out in the lane, but the stewards denied it.
The win snapped what had become a six-race losing streak for Late Nite Call. After winning a Pimlico allowance last May, Late Nite Call had run in five consecutive stakes, starting with a credible fifth-place finish in the Grade 3 Delaware Oaks won by Fondly.
“I said to [owner Richard Harris], ‘We’ll take a stab at the Delaware Oaks,’ and she ran good there,” Saville said. “So we let her have a stab there, and we put her at the farm for three months and then brought her back.”
That demonstrates one of Late Nite Call’s particularities: she likes winter racing. So the plan to give her the summer off, if a bit unusual for a talented three-year-old, made sense.
She returned in November in the seven-furlong Safely Kept at Laurel, but her seventh-place finish demonstrated another of them: she wants to go two turns.
Late Nite Call just missed next time out in the Carousel, second a neck to Complexity Jane, and then finished third in the both the Geisha, at a one-turn mile, and the Nellie Morse. But last time out, in the snow at Colonial Downs and in a one-turn race, she finished a well-beaten fifth.
“She’s never wanted to go one turn or a sloppy track,” Saville said. “It was just, it’s not always perfect and you can’t always do what you want to do. Luckily, Xavier [Perez] looked after her that day, brought her back, and she hasn’t missed a beat since.”
Saville said he’d initially planned to skip this contest and await the next two-other-than in the book but decided that with a horse doing well and a smaller field, it was best to strike while the iron was hot.
The win was one of two on the day for Perez, who doubled his win total on the year to four. And it was the first of the year for Saville’s small, nine-horse operation. As for Late Nite Call, the trainer was effusive in his praise.
“I love her,” he said. “If I could have four or five horses like her every winter that love this track, I’d be happy.”
Pick up reliable and rewarding tickets for major events!
LATEST NEWS
