Bill Parcells has reached the pinnacle of professional football twice, coaching the New York Giants to a pair of Super Bowl championships. Yet a victory at the top level in Thoroughbred racing has been elusive for the 2013 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee.

That could change this summer at Saratoga Race Course.

Bill Parcells (Anne Eberhardt/Blood-Horse)

Parcells, 81, races undefeated Maple Leaf Mel, who improved to 5-for-5 with a 2 ½-length win in the $175,000 Victory Ride Stakes July 8 at Belmont Park.

The Victory Ride is classified as a Grade 3 race and it was the second win at that level and fourth stakes win overall for Parcells’ talented 3-year-old filly by Cross Traffic. In North American racing, a Grade 1 race is considered the highest level of competition and Parcells is looking for his first Grade 1 win.

Trainer Melanie Giddings said Maple Leaf Mel will now target the $500,000 Test Stakes, a seven-furlong sprint on Aug. 5 at Saratoga Race Course that could provide the retired coach with that Grade 1 win.

Parcells named the filly after Giddings, a Canada native who was at the time working as an assistant to Jeremiah Englehart and had shown exceptional courage in the face of adversity. Giddings was diagnosed in 2020 with Stage 4 endocervical and ovarian cancer. She had a pair of large tumors removed in June 2020 followed by months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment into 2021.

“He’s a good, genuine person and he’s always wanting to help people. It’s just his nature,” Giddings said of Parcells. “I don’t think anyone ever envisions naming a horse after somebody and it’s turning out to really be something. We want every horse to be something, but this just happened to be the one.”

The surgery and subsequent treatments were extraordinarily taxing, but Giddings health has steadily improved and she has remained cancer free.

Maple Leaf Mel made her first four starts for Englehart, but was transferred by Parcells to Giddings, who went out on her own this year. Giddings, 39, earned her first stakes win in the Victory Ride with her namesake.

“To me, it would be weird to not have Maple Leaf Mel in my barn,” she said before the Victory Ride.  “After having looked after her for so long, it would be more strange to not see her rather than to see her every day.

“Usually, when people name horses after people, it doesn’t turn out the way it’s turned out with her. I just hope we can continue to have success with her through the summer.”

Melanie Giddings celebrates the Victory Ride win. (Eclipse Sportswire)

Maple Leaf Mel won both of her races as a 2-year-old, scoring by five lengths in her debut last August and then by 3 ½ lengths in the Seeking the Ante Stakes later that month, both at Saratoga Race Course.

She opened her 3-year-old season with a 7 ¼-length romp in the East View Stakes March 24 at Aqueduct and then won the Grade 3 Miss Preakness Stakes Presented by Case Tractor at Pimlico on the May 19 Black-Eyed Susan Stakes undercard. The Miss Preakness Stakes came on a national telecast and was Maple Leaf Mel’s first try in a graded stakes, and she did not disappoint.

Maple Leaf Mel made her first official start for Giddings in the Victory Ride Stakes July 8, and the trainer admitted to feeling the pressure.

“I was more nervous for the filly than myself. I don’t even feel like it’s about me,” said Giddings, who also worked with Hall of Fame trainers Mark Casse and Steve Asmussen. “I just felt like she was 4-for-4 and I would just hate for her to have anything bad in her life. She’s been so good to me.”

Maple Leaf Mel dominated yet again for Parcells’ August Dawn Farm and Giddings in the Victory Ride, leading from start to finish in a 2 ½-length victory to remain unbeaten. Next up is the Test Stakes and a chance for Maple Leaf Mel to give both Parcells and Giddings their first Grade 1 win.

“That would be the goal. I hope the whole group is there,” Giddings said after the Victory Ride win. “In a way, we’re all part of the team. I’ve been texting Jeremiah all day about the filly and he wished me the best of luck. I wish he could have been here with me.”