Gin Gin seeks Keeneland rebound in Doubledogdare after Distaff letdown

Gin Gin gets a fast return to her best stage at Keeneland, where the Calumet Farm homebred will try to turn a Breeders’ Cup Distaff misfire into a second straight Doubledogdare victory and, in the process, make race history. She is 2-for-2 at the Lexington track and comes back as the 2-1 morning-line favorite for the $400,000 Baird Doubledogdare Stakes, a 1 1/16-mile dirt test that has been elevated to Grade 2 status for 2026.

The assignment is familiar, but the setup is very different from a year ago. Gin Gin won the 2025 Doubledogdare as a 38-1 outsider, going wire to wire under Jose Ortiz and clearing Tarifa by 5 1/4 lengths in 1:45.15. That race announced her as a Keeneland horse. The next major stage did not go nearly as smoothly. In the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Del Mar, she broke poorly, had to be backed out and reset after a gate issue, and was part of the early pace pressure before finishing 12th as Scylla won in 1:48.07.

That contrast gives Friday’s race its tension. Gin Gin had just produced one of the best efforts of her career in the Spinster Stakes, when she controlled the pace and held off eventual champion Nitrogen while 2024 Horse of the Year Thorpedo Anna faded to fourth. If that version of Gin Gin shows up again, Brendan Walsh’s mare can still carry speed a long way. If the Distaff was a sign that she needs everything to go right, the margin for error shrinks sharply in a field this deep.

Alpine Princess is the chief danger and brings the kind of graded-stakes form that makes the race a legitimate prep as well as a betting race. Drawn in post 1 with Irad Ortiz Jr. aboard, she is 5-2 on the morning line and has earned $978,465, leaving her just shy of millionaire status. She won the Falls City Stakes to close 2025, then opened this season with a second in the Royal Delta, a race that was later flattered when Claret Beret came back to win the Apple Blossom.

Eunomia, who was third in that Royal Delta, adds another pace presence, with Running Away also in the mix and Peignoir and Aye Candy offering longer-shot intrigue. Keeneland said the 31st running of the race will be the first chance for a horse to win the Doubledogdare back-to-back, and only Jeano has won it twice, doing so in 1992 and 1994. Gin Gin now gets the chance to add her name to that slim line of history.