Hipnotizada is first winner for Uncle Lino

The betting public loved Hipnotizada, sending the juvenile off at 3-10 in a Delaware Park maiden race Saturday afternoon.

That proved prescient, as Hipnotizada sped to the early lead and then drew away to win the $40,000 event by more than six lengths, stopping the timer in 1:04.29 for 5 1/2 furlongs on a fast main track.

In so doing, she became the first winner for Pennsylvania-based sire Uncle Lino, whose oldest offspring are two-year-olds this year.

Hipnotizada, with Carol Cedeno in the irons, was making the second start of her young career. She ran second in her debut, also at Delaware. She’s trained by Anthony Pecoraro for Mark Esposito’s Black Cloud Racing Stable, which paid $40,000 for her at last year’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic fall yearling sale in Timonium.

Hipnotizada now has a win and a second from two starts, with earnings of $40,000.

Uncle Lino, who stands at Northview-PA in Peach Bottom, PA, bred 103 mares in 2017 — the most of any stallion in the Mid-Atlantic, according to the Jockey Club’s Report of Mares Bred — and should have a big shot at being among the region’s leading first-crop sires.

On the racetrack, Uncle Lino, a son of Uncle Mo, won twice from eight starts and earned $316,150. He won the 2016 California Chrome Stakes at Los Alamitos before finishing seventh in that year’s Preakness Stakes. He placed in two graded events, including a third-place effort Exaggerator in that year’s Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby.