Untapable winning the 2015 Apple Blossom Handicap at Oaklawn Park.
Champion Untapable is back and will kick off here five-year-old season with a start in the $350,000 Azeri Stakes (GII). She hasn’t raced since finishing second in last year’s Spinster Stakes (GI) at Keeneland and was attempting to repeat in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff (GI) before spiking a fever and being withdrawn from consideration. She received an extended vacation over the winter and has been training strongly over the Oaklawn surface since, with the short-term goal being defending her title in the April 15 Apple Blossom Handicap (GI).
The daughter of Tapit and the Grade II-winning Prized mare Fun House was bred in Kentucky by her owners, Winchell Thoroughbreds, and is trained by Steve Asmussen. She will carry jockey Florent Geroux from post position seven.
Call Pat and Streamline, the one-two finishers from last month’s Bayakoa Stakes, will put Untapable to the test, as will California shipper Kyriaki and grade 2 winners Sarah Sis and High Dollar Woman.
A field of eight will head to the gate in the seventh race Azeri, a 1 1/16-mile event set to go off at 5:21 p.m EDT.
California native and lifelong horsewoman Margaret Ransom is a graduate of the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program. She got her start in racing working in the publicity departments at Calder Race Course and Hialeah Park, as well as in the racing office at Gulfstream Park in South Florida. She then spent six years in Lexington, KY, at BRISnet.com, where she helped create and develop the company’s popular newsletters: Handicapper’s Edge and Bloodstock Journal. After returning to California, she served six years as the Southern California news correspondent for BloodHorse, assisted in the publicity department at Santa Anita Park and was a contributor to many other racing publications, including HorsePlayer Magazine and Trainer Magazine. She then spent seven years at HRTV and HRTV.com in various roles as researcher, programming assistant, producer and social media and marketing manager.
She has also walked hots and groomed runners, worked the elite sales in Kentucky for top-class consignors and volunteers for several racehorse retirement organizations, including CARMA.
In 2016, Margaret was the recipient of the prestigious Stanley Bergstein Writing Award, sponsored by Team Valor, and was an Eclipse Award honorable mention for her story, “The Shocking Untold Story of Maria Borell,” which appeared on USRacing.com. The article and subsequent stories helped save 43 abandoned and neglected Thoroughbreds in Kentucky and also helped create a new animal welfare law known as the “Borell Law.”
Margaret’s very first Breeders’ Cup was at Hollywood Park in 1984 and she has attended more than half of the Breeders’ Cups since. She counts Holy Bull and Arrogate as her favorite horses of all time. She lives in Pasadena with her longtime beau, Tony, two Australian Shepherds and one Golden Retriever.
