Amelia Green’s patient placement fuels Ivy Girl’s Black-Eyed Susan shot

Amelia Green’s spring has turned into a case study in patient placement, and Ivy Girl is the horse making the point loudest. Green had 18 wins through May 12, matching her total for all of 2025, and the surge has been powered by a filly who has been moved with purpose at every step instead of rushed into deep water.

Ivy Girl’s path has been carefully staged. She broke her maiden for a $40,000 tag at Aqueduct on Nov. 15, 2025, then was asked to jump straight into the Grade 2 Demoiselle Stakes on Dec. 6, where she finished sixth. Green pulled her back into a more sensible allowance spot at Laurel, then sent her to Parx for the Main Line Stakes on March 3, where she won, before returning to Laurel for the Weber City Miss Stakes on April 18. That 26-1 upset did more than add another line to her record. It earned an automatic berth in the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes and set up a legitimate graded-stakes opportunity on Preakness weekend.

That progression is the clearest evidence yet that Green has found a better rhythm in her second act as a trainer. After years as an assistant to Todd Pletcher, she established her own stable in 2024, and her background runs from the United Kingdom, where she rode showjumping ponies, to the East Coast, where she worked for George Weaver before joining Pletcher’s operation in 2017. For seven years she traveled with horses such as Life Is Good, Malathaat, Audible and Mind Control. Now the emphasis is on placing horses where they can succeed and letting confidence build into form.

Ivy Girl fits that template. Equibase lists the 3-year-old filly by Maxfield out of Critikal Reason, by Aptitude, with six lifetime starts, a 3-1-1 record and $181,020 in earnings, including $143,600 already banked in 2026. Victor Carrasco, who rode her in the Weber City Miss, returns for the Black-Eyed Susan, where Ivy Girl is listed at 15-1 on the morning line. She may not have the top raw speed in the field, but Green believes the extra sixteenth of a mile could help.

The 102nd Black-Eyed Susan is a Grade 2 for 3-year-old fillies at 1 1/8 miles, and because Pimlico is under reconstruction, it is scheduled for Laurel Park on Friday, May 15, as part of a Preakness Festival card with six stakes and $1 million in total purses. For Green, the race is bigger than one afternoon. A graded breakthrough would validate the stable identity she is building, one horse placement at a time.