Bye powers to Kendrick Inaugural Stakes win at Sunray Park

Bye lived up to his name in the Kendrick Inaugural Stakes, and the way he did it mattered more than the margin. The 6-year-old gelding powered clear at Sunray Park on April 11, winning the 6 1/2-furlong stakes by 1 1/4 lengths over a fast track in 1:17.71 and collecting $45,000 for Greg Green Racing, LLC.

That was not the profile of a horse getting lucky in a compact regional stakes. Bye, a son of Mark Valeski out of Creative Trick, by Creative Cause, was ridden by Miguel A. Perez and trained by Greg Green. Bred in Kentucky by Brereton C. Jones, he handled Race 9 at the Farmington, New Mexico, track like a horse with enough foundation to matter again when the competition gets sharper. The Kendrick Inaugural carried a $75,000 purse and an official value of $73,876, making the result a solid payday and a useful marker for a horse trying to climb beyond the local circuit.

The race conditions added context to the win. The Kendrick Inaugural was restricted to 3-year-olds and up, with a $200 nomination fee and a $400 entry fee, and higher-money earners from 2025 and 2026 were preferred. That kind of setup tends to sort out runners who are already active and fit, which is exactly why Bye’s decisive score stands out. He was not simply along for the trip. He separated enough to finish with authority, and on a day when the SunRay Park & Casino season was just getting underway, that suggested a horse ready to stay in play through the spring.

The time, while not close to the Sunray Park track record of 1:15.30 for the distance, still painted a useful picture of the performance. Bye’s 1:17.71 was a legitimate stakes-winning effort, and the 1 1/4-length margin gave the result more weight than a photo-finish scrape would have. That matters in a race like this, where the next step is not national headlines but whether a horse can repeat the effort in tougher sprint company.

The Kendrick Inaugural has produced another clear benchmark before. In 2025, Coastal Jazz won the same race by 3 1/2 lengths in 1:16.58 for Rockingham Ranch and trainer Justin R. Evans. Bye’s victory fit that same regional stakes pattern: a sound, race-fit horse taking a meaningful spring prize and putting himself on the short list for the next step.