Twirling Queen Targets Giant's Causeway Grade 2 After Gulfstream Victory

An 18-1 longshot three weeks ago, Twirling Queen is no longer flying under the radar. The five-year-old mare trained by Jose Francisco D'Angelo will ship to Lexington for Sunday's 29th running of the $400,000 Giant's Causeway (G2) Presented by Keeneland Select, entering one of the spring meet's marquee turf sprint events off a performance that turned heads in South Florida.

On March 14 at Gulfstream Park, Twirling Queen blew past favored Moon Spun for the early lead and simply refused to be caught, posting a gate-to-wire victory in the $125,000 Captiva Island Stakes. Luis Saez was aboard for the five-furlong score, which came on the all-weather track after the race was moved off the turf. The win was her fifth in a stakes, and it came at odds that made it one of the more memorable upsets of Gulfstream's Championship Meet.

The Keeneland target is a natural extension of what that Captiva Island win demonstrated: Twirling Queen, a daughter of Twirling Candy out of Adventurous Lady, owns legitimate early speed and the ability to control a pace scenario from the front. The Giant's Causeway goes 5½ furlongs on the grass as the seventh race on Sunday's nine-race program, with a 4:12 p.m. ET post time. That distance and turf configuration suits a mare whose connections have been deliberate about picking spots that play to her strengths.

She will not be walking into an easy spot. Time to Dazzle, trained by Mark Casse and owned by Tracy Farmer, headlines a field of 12 fillies and mares as the clear form reference: she won last fall's Franklin (G2) at Keeneland by daylight and entered 2026 by taking on the boys in Saudi Arabia. The Keeneland course is her home kitchen, which makes D'Angelo's decision to ship Twirling Queen north all the more telling. The barn clearly believes the Captiva Island win was substance, not circumstance.

For handicappers, the central question Sunday is pace shape. Twirling Queen's entire identity is built on controlling the early fractions; if something else wants that lead, the dynamic shifts considerably. Her comfort level on Keeneland's turf configuration after a cross-country trip adds another layer of uncertainty. But a horse that just sprinted wire-to-wire at 18-1 is worth taking seriously at any price, and owner Hernan Gomez's connections have earned that consideration. A strong finish would open a summer sprint/mile calendar and, longer term, only strengthen her broodmare profile as a Twirling Candy mare with graded-stakes ambitions.