Cherie DeVaux was ready for some champagne.

DeVaux came, saw, and conquered Friday afternoon at Pimlico, sending out horses in three different stakes and winning all three. The biggest of those she saved for last when Pyrenees overcame a dawdling pace up front to run down 3-5 favorite Kingsbarns to win the Grade 3, $250,000 Pimlico Special.

“I haven’t had champagne all day,” she said plaintively as the rest of Pyrenees’ connections made their way into the Pimlico paddock for a champagne toast.

But there was one more job to do: relive her day with the assembled media.

Given the day, though, that wasn’t exactly hardship duty. The class-dropping Shotgun Hottie kicked things off in style, dominating the $100,000 Allaire DuPont Distaff for older fillies and mares by nearly six lengths at 4-5 odds.

Then She Feels Pretty won by a similar margin at even shorter odds, 3-5, in the grassy Hilltop Stakes for sophomore fillies. It was a useful launch to the Karakontie filly’s three-year-old campaign following a rookie season in which she finished third by less than a length in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf.

And then came Pyrenees.

“It’s just one of those things where you just have to let it set in,” DeVaux said. “The prior two [Shotgun Hottie and She Feels Pretty] were heavy favorites. So this was one that I was really interested in seeing how he was going to do, and it’s just really special.”

“He’s been a horse has been a challenge for us,” DeVaux allowed of the four-year-old Into Mischief colt, a homebred for Blue Heaven Farm.

Immaturity left him winless in four starts at two, and injury cost him almost his entire four-year-old season. But he’s been a different horse since returning to action this past December. He entered the Special with a three-race win streak.

“He really trained like he had a lot in him but always hung,” DeVaux explained. “Then he had a pretty significant injury that caused the layoff so we just regrouped with him. Really that’s all that we did is just – he forced us to give him the time.”

The Special included seven runners, including three graded stakes winners. What it didn’t include, though, was a horse especially intent on taking the lead. Harlocap, with Paco Lopez in the irons, led the first time by with Kingsbarns, the 7-10 post time favorite with Luis Saez up for two-time Special winner Steve Asmussen, latched to his hip.

But the early fractions were glacial: 24.80 seconds for the opening quarter-mile, 50.26 seconds for the half, and 1:15.57 for three quarters.

Those fractions seemed to presage a one-two finish for Harlocap and Kingsbarns, and as the field rounded the far turn, that pair spurted clear of everyone but Pyrenees.

“They went so slow in front of us,” winning rider Brian Hernandez, Jr. said. “And we were following the favorite – of course, he looked like the horse to beat… As slow as they were going, I got a little worried around the second turn because it stayed bunched up, and we were kind of in a pocket.”

But Royal Ship, perched in third for much of the way, gave up the chase nearing the quarter pole. That enabled Hernandez to guide his mount outside for the stretch drive, and Pyrenees reeled in Kingsbarns late to win by three parts of a length, with that runner a similar distance ahead of Harlocap.

Running time for the 1 3/16 miles was 1:57.73 as the field picked up its pace dramatically in the second part of the race.

Pyrenees paid $12.20 to win and topped an exacta, with the favorite underneath, that returned $17.00 on a one-dollar wager. The win was Pyrenees’ first in stakes company.

Hernandez, of course, has even bigger fish to fry: he’ll ride Mystik Dan in Saturday’s Grade 1 Preakness Stakes as that runner takes aim at the second jewel of the Triple Crown. But he wasn’t selling short this win, either.

“It’s an honor to win the Pimlico Special,” the rider said. “It’s such a prestigious race over the years of racing, you know, the great horses that have won this race. So to add our name to that list is an honor. Now we’re we’re looking forward to Saturday.”

As for DeVaux: “I’m going to drink champagne,” she said as the media scrum broke up.

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