Distorted Humor filly comes up big in Grade 2 Bessarabian S.

Distorted Humor’s talented 4-year-old filly Hillaby registered a decisive victory in Sunday’s $232,000 Grade 2 Bessarabian S. at Woodbine, becoming her sire’s 125th lifetime stakes winner.

Hillaby stalked the early pace set by Cryptic Message through splits of :22.76 and :45.19, then loomed up to the leader at the top of the stretch, sprinting clear to win by 2 ¾-lengths in a quick 1:21.44 for the seven furlongs.

“She left running, but I knew I couldn’t go with Eurico (da Silva, aboard Cryptic Message) so I tried to ease her back and get to the outside,” said her rider Patrick Husbands. “Jesse (Campbell, aboard Native Bombshell) did what he had to do to keep me in. But when Jesse went ahead, I put her back on her right lead and she just took me around there.”

In July, original owner/breeder Eugene Melnyk entered Hillaby into the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky summer selected horses of racing age sale, where she sold to her current owner, Stonestreet Stables, for $500,000.

Hillaby is now 4-1-1 in seven starts and has banked $260,314. She is out of Melnyk’s 2007 Canadian Horse of the Year Sealy Hill, who earned more than $1.7 million in her career.

Distorted Humor has tallied 217 stakes horses, 52 Group/Graded stakes winners and earners of $106-million in his distinguished siring career. In 2014, he has 22 stakes horses and earners of more than $6 million. He will stand the 2015 season for $100,000 stands and nurses.