by B. Jason Brooks
After missing her entire three-year-old campaign last year, Phipps Stable’s Self Confident continues her return with her third race of the year on Saturday, April 6th.
The Into Mischief filly is entered for Race 7 at Tampa Bay Downs, a maiden special weight covering a mile and a sixteenth on the grass. Breaking from post position № 4 in a field of 11, the Shug McGaughey trainee will have jockey Pablo Morales in the irons for the first time. Post time is 3:25 pm Eastern.
Self Confident showed promise early on in her career, finishing runner-up by a neck in her juvenile debut in a lucrative $150,000 maiden special weight turf race over a mile at Kentucky Downs. After being bumped at the start, she recovered and rallied gamely in the stretch, crossing the wire behind Navy Goat, by Army Mule, who went on to win a stakes race at Gulfstream in her next start.
Remaining on the turf, she stretched out to a mile and a sixteenth for her two remaining juvenile starts, faltering late in her October race at Keeneland to finish fifth, a length and three-quarters behind the winner. At Aqueduct a month later, she brushed with a foe at the start, settled near the back of the pack, and lacked a response in the stretch, crossing the wire eighth.
After taking last year off, Self Confident has faced some minor challenges in her two starts this year, recovering from being bumped in both races to finish on the board at Gulfstream Park. If she can get a clean trip on Saturday, hopefully the Phipps and McGaughey team’s patience will pay off and she can take a nice step forward.
As for her pedigree, she is a half-sister of Phipps Stable’s stakes-placed Speightstown horse Dreams of Tomorrow. Self Confident shares the same Into Mischief-Medaglia d’Oro cross as Qatar Racing’s Everso Mischievous, winner of the grade 2 Forty Niner Stakes last October at Aqueduct.
The Phipps homebred’s dam Sabbatical, by Medaglia d’Oro is from an accomplished family of siblings: the late Maryland sire Imagining, by Giant’s Causeway, winner of the grade 1 Man o’ War Stakes at Belmont in 2015; Snooze, by Forestry, granddam of Chocolate Gelato, by Practical Joke, winner the grade 1 Frizette Stakes at Aqueduct in 2022; full sister Browse is the dam of Pipit, by Quality Road, winner of the Victoria Stakes last year at Woodbine; and, Awakened, by Curlin, a grade 1-winning hurdler.
Self Confident’s multiple graded stakes-winning granddam Daydreaming, by A.P. Indy, is a full sister of grade 1-winning sire Girolamo, as well as Supercharger, dam of 2010 Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver.
Her third dam, graded stakes winner Get Lucky, by Mr. Prospector, is a full sister of champion Rhythm and 15-time leading Maryland stallion Not for Love. Get Lucky and her family are best described by Avalyn Hunter who wrote on her American Classic Pedigrees website (here) that she was “a good race mare by a top sire and from one of the world’s greatest families… Even better, her daughters have bred on in exceptional fashion, making her branch of the La Troienne family one of the hottest of the early 21st century.”
Photo: Self Confident at Gulfstream Park, January 2024
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