Surprisingly Seeking Another Graded Stakes Win in the Matchmaker

by B. Jason Brooks

PHIPPS STABLE’s homebred filly Surprisingly is seeking her second graded stakes win in the 57th running of the grade 3 Matchmaker Stakes on Saturday, July 22nd at Monmouth Park. Winner of the grade 3 Endeavour Stakes in February at Tampa Bay Downs, she has since placed in the grade 2 Hillsborough Stakes at Tampa in March, grade 3 Beaugay Stakes at Belmont Park in May, and grade 3 Eatontown Stakes at Monmouth Park in June.

The four-year-old Mastery filly enters the race tied with stablemate Personal Best for the second shortest odds in the field at 3-1, with the favorite being Klaravich Stables’ Chad Brown-trained Consumer Spending at 5-2. With a purse of $300,000, the Matchmaker Stakes is the fifth race on Monmouth Park’s Haskell undercard and has a post time of 1:52 pm Eastern.

Jockey Paco Lopez retains the mount with Surprisingly breaking from outside post № 7. The Monmouth meet’s leading jockey guided Surprisingly to a win in her career debut as a juvenile at Monmouth as well as her Endeavour Stakes victory at Tampa this year.

While Hall of Fame trainer Claude R. “Shug” McGaughey is seeking his first career Matchmaker win, Ogden Phipps’s champion Buckpasser mare Numbered Account won the race in 1972 at Atlantic City Race Course, with jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. aboard for trainer Roger Laurin. The win declaration came after a lengthy ten-minute inquiry and the stewards ultimately disqualifying first-place finisher Alma North for having drifted in and out in the stretch to “intimidate” her foes after tiring under jockey Michael Hole, according to the New York Times.

Surprisingly has a career record of four wins and four placings from ten starts, with earnings of $276,950. Her dam Vagabond is a half-sister to graded-stakes winner Great Island and she’s from a prominent Phipps female family that traces back to foundation mare Our Country Place, a daughter of multiple grade 1 winner Maplejinsky. The family includes grade 1 winners Guarana, Pine Island, Pleasant Home, and Point of Entry, the latter three Phipps homebreds.