Kuramata ends stakes skid with Oceanport triumph

Chad Brown broke a 13-horse turf-stakes losing streak when Kuramata won the $100,000 Oceanport Stakes on Sunday at Monmouth Park.

That might not seem like much of a losing streak – unless you are Chad Brown. Brown has been going absolutely bonkers in turf-stakes races during 2022, and the Oceanport was his 31st win in such a race this year with 3 1/2 months of racing remaining.

As for Kuramata, a stakes win was a long time coming, not in number of starts, but in years. A 5-year-old horse by Australia out of Blue Kimono, by Invincible Spirit, Kuramata was bred by Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm and is owned by Brant, and he began his racing career quietly, in December 2019 over the all-weather surface at Kempton Park in England. Kuramata was one-and-done during that brief campaign, unraced again until February 2021, when he showed up in a Tampa Bay Downs maiden race, now in the Brown barn.

Kuramata won that race, won again in April at Aqueduct, but after an eighth-place finish in the Dinner Party Stakes on the Preakness undercard that May, he was out of action again for another seven months. Kuramata ran sparingly this season, running well but losing second-level allowance races in January, April, and most recently on July 1, and Brown chose the right spot for his return to stakes competition.

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That fact evidently had been instilled in jockey Hector Diaz Jr. before the Oceanport, Diaz telling Monmouth Park publicity, “I knew I was on the best horse. It was just a matter of working out a good trip.”

Mid Day Image and Winfromwithin helped in that regard, speed-dueling through a half-mile in a testing 46.12 as Kuramata sat perched just behind the pace players. The trip, in fact, was just about perfect, Kuramata overtaking the tiring leaders and going on to an easy 2 3/4-length victory.

Mohs loomed a threat at the three-sixteenths poles but had lost his momentum at the eighth pole and just managed second, a half-length in front of Hot Blooded. Kuramata, the tepid favorite, paid $6.60 to win and was timed in 1:40.70 for 1 1/16 miles over a firm grass course.

Two Emmys, a Grade 1 winner who would have been among the favorites, was an early scratch Sunday because the New Jersey Racing Commission refused to license his trainer, Mac Robertson. Roberton is serving two years of unsupervised probation owing to a disorderly conduct case in Kentucky.

Nothing Better best in Rainbow Heir

Former claimers are ruling the Monmouth Park turf-sprint division this summer.

Last month, Breakthrough, who ran for a $25,000 tag early in his career, won the Wolf Hill Stakes, and on Sunday, Nothing Better, in for a $30,000 price last summer, won a speed duel with Breakthrough and went on to win the $100,000 Rainbow Heir Stakes by two lengths.

In two starts this year, Nothing Better had won a second-level allowance race and most recently finished third in a $30,000 conditioned starter-allowance. That made him an 8-1 shot Sunday, but after pressing a hot pace and putting away Breakthrough, Nothing Better had no trouble holding clear 4-5 favorite Belgrano, who had also been second in the Wolf Hill.

“With these turf sprinters, there’s not a big difference between non-winners of two or three other than these stakes races,” winning trainer Jorge Duarte Jr. said.

Nothing Better paid $19.20 while clocking 1:02.57 for 5 1/2 furlongs. Breakthrough held on for third. Feast and Outadore were scratched, as was main-track-only entrant Sagamore Mischief.

Nothing Better, a 5-year-old gelding, is by Munnings out of One True Love, by Duke of Marmalade. He’s owned by Richard Santulli’s Colts Neck Stables and was bred by the Don Alberto Corporation.