By admin 
Where in the world is Dora? Maybe it doesn’t matter because Explora (by Blame) was present and easily accounted for in the Grade 1 Test Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 8, when she won the race by five lengths and became a Grade 1 winner.
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Last season, the dark brown filly had finished second in a pair of Grade 1 races, the Del Mar Debutante and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, and in between those had won the G2 Oak Leaf Stakes. She is clearly one of the best of her crop, especially at distances just below a mile, it seems.
Explora had been given a straightforward preparation for the filly classics by trainer Bob Baffert, and the brown bullet had won the Santa Ysabel at seven furlongs, finished second in the Las Virgenes to the high-quality Meaning (Gun Runner), won the G3 Honeybee Stakes at Oaklawn by three-quarters of a length over Counting Stars (Honor A.P.), and then finished off the board for the only time in her career in the G1 Kentucky Oaks at nine furlongs behind Always a Runner (Gun Runner), Meaning, and Counting Stars, beaten 2 ½ lengths.
The filly returned to seven furlongs for her next two starts, the Lesley’s Lady at Churchill Downs and the Test, and has two victories in a row. Explora’s career count now stands at six winning races from 10 starts, three seconds, and earnings of slightly more than $1.5 million.
She is indeed a mighty nice filly with an interesting pedigree.
Bred in Kentucky by Mesingw Farm LLC, Explora was a $22,000 yearling at the Keeneland September sale in 2024, where she was purchased out of the Warrendale Sales consignment by Rusty Roberts. Sent into training, the filly was prepared for the juvenile in-training sales by Clovis Crane and sold by Crane Thoroughbred Services, agent, at the 2025 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Sale of 2-Year-Olds in training for $350,000 to Three Amigos (Mike Pegram, Karl Watson, and Paul Weitman).
In attracting the attention of Baffert and his team, Hip 64, later named Explora, had skipped over a very muddy track at Timonium in :10 1/5, which tied for the fastest work of the day.
Crane recalled: “She had the fastest gallop-out of any horse in the sale, went in :33. She was by Blame and didn’t have the biggest pedigree on the bottom, but she was really fast.
“She’s not a really big filly, but a lighter horse will stay sound and happy. She was so light on her feet that she was easy to keep sound.
“Rusty Roberts deserves all the credit for buying her at the sale, then was patient with her while working her through sesamoiditis, and he brought her to us at Christmas. Rusty does a nice job picking out horses, then allows me to do my job of getting them broken and trained up to race.”
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Having owned some pinhooks with Crane and having consigned them with him at the Timonium sale, breeder and owner Rick Trontz noted that “Clovis is a great horseman. He went to Purdue University on a wrestling scholarship and was also a national rodeo champion. He can ride, break, and train just about anything, and that’s one of the things that makes his program so successful at training racehorses.”
Before he brought Explora to the Timonium sale, however, Crane had a couple of hurdles to clear. He said, “After breaking her, Explora cut her hock and had a little fracture line there from kicking through the wall of her Eurocizer; I thought it had just been a cut, and I gave her six weeks to heal properly, but come to find out, she had a small crack and had just the right treatment (time) to put everything right.”
Once healed and trained up for racing fitness, Crane brought Explora to the sale at Timonium. There, she proved to be fit and ready on the day, and when the track turned out to be a sheet of mud, rather than the typically quick traditional dirt surface, she took the change like a pro.
“She was a very good-feeling filly,” Crane said. “She liked to do what she was there to do. In addition to fitness and mental readiness, to perform at an elite level, they have to want to do it.”
Explora has found the right spot to show her talent at the G1 level, and she became the first G1 winner in the direct female line since her fourth dam, Hill of Snow (Reference Point), produced Preseli (Caerleon), who was an unbeaten juvenile highweight in 1999 on the European Free Handicap, when she won the G1 Moyglare Stud Stakes.
Hill of Snow produced two other stakes winners, as well as Preseli’s half-sister Snowfire (Machiavellian), who was second in the 1,000 Guineas of 2002 at Newmarket. Snowfire is Explora’s third dam, and Snowfire’s best racer, stakes winner Model (Giant’s Causeway), ran second in the G1 Spinster at Keeneland, as well as the G1 Santa Maria at Santa Anita.
Model did not produce any black-type racers, but her daughter Collections Choice (Bernardini) was a winner and has produced five winners, including Explora.
And Explora was fit, ready, and striving to achieve as she found her best stride down the stretch at Saratoga on Saturday.
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This story was originally published August 12, 2026 at 4:16 AM.