Pin Up Betty repeats in Anchorage Stakes, sets course record

Pin Up Betty made the Anchorage Stakes look like a reclamation of order, not just a repeat win. The 5-year-old daughter of Constitution, carrying 118 pounds for trainer Michael Maker and Three Diamonds Farm, rolled past Way to Be Marie by two lengths in the June 27 1 1/8-mile turf stakes at Churchill Downs and stopped the clock in 1:48.45, a course-record final time for the fifth running of the race.

The setting sharpened the result. Churchill’s turf course was rated good after heavy overnight and morning rain, and the Saturday card had already been battered by weather and flash flood warnings in nearby counties. Even with conditions taking some speed out of the surface, Pin Up Betty, the $7.42 favorite, handled the assignment with the kind of control that separates a one-off stakes winner from a mare that can keep owning the same division.

Maker had seen the contrast before. After the May 30 Mint Julep, he said Pin Up Betty did not like being asked to race closer to the pace than usual, and he adjusted here. She settled comfortably in fifth after the opening half-mile, saved ground, and tipped out late under Flavien Prat. “Just let him do his thing today,” Maker told Prat before the race, and the ride matched the instruction.

The repeat mattered because it was a Churchill statement as much as a stakes victory. DRF’s numbers had her 3-for-5 on the Churchill Downs turf before the Anchorage, and the list now runs through the 2024 Regret Stakes, the 2025 Mint Julep Stakes, the 2025 Anchorage Overnight Stakes, and the 2026 Anchorage Stakes. For a Kentucky-bred mare foaled March 26, 2021, and listed by Equibase as by Constitution out of I’m Betty G by Into Mischief, that kind of Churchill résumé places her near the top of the local older-filly hierarchy.

Her past performances show why the repeat lands with extra force. She won the June 1, 2025 Mint Julep in 1:40.55 for 1 1/16 miles, a stakes-record effort for WinStar Farm, and that came exactly one year after her 2024 Regret Stakes victory. She also won the 2025 Mint Julep from sixth at the top of the stretch, a pattern that underlines how well she can finish when Maker keeps her relaxed and lets the race come back to her.

That profile points toward the summer turf routes that fit her best, especially the Churchill races that reward patience, ground-saving trips, and a sharp late kick. Pin Up Betty did more than defend a title in Louisville. She reasserted control over a division that tends to recycle the same capable mares, and she did it on a rain-hit course fast enough to set a record and deep enough to expose the rest.