I Love Giraffes steps up in Saratoga's Wild Applause stakes test

I Love Giraffes leaves Laurel Park with a real stakes case, not just a pretty allowance line. The Gold Square filly beat older fillies and mares by a neck on May 16, and now Chad Summers sends her into Saratoga Race Course’s Listed $150,000 Wild Applause from post 9 with a 6/1 morning line and Paco Lopez aboard.

That Laurel victory mattered because it was not built on a soft setup. I Love Giraffes went a mile on the turf in 1:35.25, paid $16.20 to win and finished strong after settling early and launching a three-wide rally in the lane. It was a useful stretch-out from her five-furlong debut win at Gulfstream Park in February, and a sharper answer than her off-the-board effort in the Melody of Colors in March. Through three starts, Equibase lists her with two wins and $74,200 in earnings as of June 30.

The Wild Applause is the right sort of test to find out whether that Laurel race was a jump forward or a peak. The one-mile inner-turf stake is restricted to 3-year-old fillies who have not won a stakes, which means I Love Giraffes is meeting horses in her own class shape even if her recent line already hints at more. Last year’s renewal was controlled from the front by Classic Q, who stopped the clock in 1:33.21 and earned $94,500 from the $150,000 purse. This year’s field is bigger, and with To a Flame, Smexy (IRE), Code, Pillar of Beauty and Lovely Grey in the mix, the pace picture looks less forgiving than the 2025 edition.

Lovely Grey adds a different layer of quality to the race. She brings eight lifetime starts, one win, two seconds, one third and $163,668 in earnings, and she was 12th in the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs on May 1 after drawing in as an also-eligible. That is the kind of résumé that can make a straight allowance winner like I Love Giraffes earn every inch of the stretch run.

Summers has put her in the hands of a trainer who has already shown he can place a horse on the big stage. Equibase lists him as a multiple graded-stakes-winning trainer with 110 career wins and more than $8.9 million in earnings, and industry profiles tie his first career victory to Mind Your Biscuits on Dubai World Cup night in 2017 and his latest big hit to Napoleon Solo in the 2026 Preakness. If I Love Giraffes is going to turn promise into stakes success, this is the kind of mile that will say it first.