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In the second leg of the Philracom-PCSO Triple Crown (1800m at Metro Manila Turf), Claudio Angeles's filly Gentle Dance won by six lengths, while record-setting first-leg winner Isa Bell was beaten well before home on a muddy track. With the first two legs split between different winners, the final leg (2000m at Padre Garcia, July 19) now comes down to a head-to-head between the two.
Bell Racing's unbeaten filly Isa Bell took the Philracom-PCSO Triple Crown Leg 1 (1,650m) by 6.5 lengths and shaved 1.2 seconds off the 3-year-old track record. What matters more than the win itself is the structure behind it: after Heneral Kalentong's 2020 sweep, COVID and the consecutive closures of Santa Ana and San Lazaro made the three-track Triple Crown system itself impossible to run. The opening of the new Padre Garcia Racetrack in November 2025 finally restarted the series after a 5-year gap. Read alongside the U.S. and Japanese classic routes, the Philippine Triple Crown is less a "miniature copy" than a working version of the same template.