Lennilu Dominates Melody of Colors Stakes to Open Her 3-Year-Old Campaign

Lennilu delivered exactly what trainer Patrick Biancone had been quietly building toward since the fall, winning the $125,000 Leinster Melody of Colors Stakes at Gulfstream Park on March 22 to launch her 3-year-old season in style. Ridden by Luis Saez over five furlongs on a good turf course, the gray Florida-bred filly posted a winning time of :56.26 and ran her record at Gulfstream to 4-0 overall, including a perfect 3-0 on the grass.

The victory was the 11th running of the Melody of Colors, a stakes named for a Florida-bred who won nine races including Gulfstream's 2004 Bob Slater Stakes. It served as the centerpiece of a 10-race card at the Hallandale Beach oval and confirmed what her juvenile form had already suggested: Lennilu belongs in graded company, and her connections have bigger targets in mind.

Owned by a group led by Amy and Caitlin Dunne, Lennilu arrived at her seasonal debut with credentials few 3-year-old fillies can match. She broke her maiden at first asking over 4½ furlongs on the dirt at Keeneland last spring, then relocated to Gulfstream, where she won the Royal Palm Juvenile Fillies Stakes on the turf to earn an automatic berth to Royal Ascot. At Ascot, she closed from 13th to finish third by less than two lengths behind subsequent Group 1 winner True Love in the Queen Mary Stakes (G2). She added wins in the Leinster Hollywood Beach Stakes and the Desert Vixen division of the Florida Sire Stakes before tackling males in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint (G1), where she pressed the early pace and faded to seventh.

Biancone drew a firm line through that Breeders' Cup effort. "The Breeders' Cup was a throwout because she was in heat. She ran flat early and then she had no gas later on. It happens with fillies. Then we turned her out on the farm for nearly a month and a half, maybe two months, and brought her back slowly. Right now we are very happy," he said. "She's a tough filly. She's tough, and her mind is on racing."

The patience paid off visibly in her worktab. Lennilu did her preparation at Palm Meadows, Gulfstream's satellite training facility in Palm Beach County, returning to the work tab in early February. She logged five breezes before the season opener, capping them with a five-furlong move in :58.15 on March 13 under Saez, the fastest of 30 horses recorded that morning. Pre-race concerns about heavy rainfall in the area, which had prompted questions about whether the turf course would hold, proved unfounded by post time.

Lennilu is a daughter of Leinster, a four-time graded-stakes winner including the 2021 Gulfstream Park Turf Sprint (G3) and an emerging second-year sire. His early book has already produced stakes-placed runners Monster, Squire, Laigina and Bronze Bullet. Lennilu herself was purchased for just $23,000 as an OBS winter yearling, making her royal-class résumé one of the sharper value stories in Florida breeding this year. Her dam, Lulu's Pom Pom, is a gray/roan mare bred by Patricia Generazio of New York who earned $92,042 from 11 starts across three seasons.

With the Melody of Colors in the books, Biancone has mapped a careful path forward: a likely next start in the Limestone Stakes (G3) at Keeneland in April, with decisions about a potential summer return to England to follow. A third in the Queen Mary as a 2-year-old, closing from near last, left little doubt she can handle a fast-class international field. The question now is whether Biancone's measured approach through the spring gets her to Ascot primed to do more than place.