(Sweet Azteca to run in Bernardo Stakes today at the Del Mar Turf Club / Benoit Photo & Courtesy of Del Mar)

From the Del Mar Turf Club Media Team:

The gray mare Sweet Azteca – a winner of eight of her 10 lifetime starts, including back-to-back scores in Del Mar’s Rancho Bernardo Stakes – will saddle up for another go at them tomorrow when she takes on five rivals in the six and a half furlong testing for fillies and mares that will highlight the shore track’s Sunday program.

This year’s 55th edition of the Grade III presentation carries a $100,000 purse and will be offered as Race 5 on a 10-race program. Likely post time for the dash is 4 p.m.

Sweet Azteca, a now 6-year-old by Sharp Azteca bred by her owner, Pamela Ziebarth, races for veteran trainer Richard Baltas, who has handled the speedster with kid gloves since he took over her training in 2025. She’s been almost exclusively a sprinter throughout her career, though she did ring the bell going a mile in Santa Anita’s Beholder Stakes back in 2024.

She’s earned $787,200 so far and will be shooting to tie the record of top class racemare Track Gal, who won the Rancho Bernardo three straight years in the 1990s. In one of those dashes – the one in 1995 – Track Gal set the stakes record of 1:14.20.

Leading rider Juan Hernandez rode Sweet Azteca to victory in this race last year and he’ll be aboard again Sunday.

Chief threat to the top one appears to be By Talla Racing or Sadler’s Thermal, a 5-year-old Nyquist mare who is coming off a romp on Memorial Day in a distaff sprint stakes at Lone Star Park in Texas. She’s been training sharply since her return to California and will have the saddle services of Hall of Fame rider Joel Rosario Sunday.

First post for the Sunday card will be the usual 2 p.m.