Lopez caps four-win day aboard Kentucky Outlaw in Long Branch

Paco Lopez – anyone with half an ear to East Coast racing knows that guy, and anyone anywhere near Monmouth Park knows his work very well. Lopez has won 11 Monmouth riding titles and on opening day of the 2025 season notched his fourth win on the card, piloting Kentucky Outlaw to a 1 1/2-length victory in the $100,000 Long Branch Stakes.

Felissa Dunn, the owner and trainer of Kentucky Outlaw – maybe you haven’t heard so much about her. There’s a reason for that. Between 2009, the first time Dunn shows up in the Daily Racing Form database, and 2023 she went 13 for 186 over eight calendar years. Last year, out of nowhere, working – according to a Monmouth news release – in concert with her husband, John Dunn, a former trainer himself, Felissa Dunn went 17 for 56.

Think that’s a bit odd? Kentucky Outlaw, who gave Dunn her first stakes win, ran her 2025 record to 9 for 24.

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Making his first start in blinkers, Kentucky Outlaw managed to pull a decent trip, despite some amateurish behavior, and even after pressing a fast half-mile split, 46.03 seconds, he had plenty left for the stretch drive, comfortably holding clear Cool Intentions, who, other than being steadied about the five-furlong marker, had a good pocket trip. Cool Intentions finished a neck in front of Pascaline, who stalked the pace, loomed at the quarter pole, but went one-paced in the homestretch.

Kentucky Outlaw broke slowly and Lopez encouraged his mount to gain forward position into the first of two turns, but the horse in front of him came out trying to negotiate the bend, and that sent Kentucky Outlaw off his path. Lopez gathered the horse up before Kentucky Outlaw could blow the turn, let him run up into second at the head of the backstretch, and even while Kentucky Outlaw tried to get rank, Lopez gently asserted control. Longhshot pacesetter Dear Chairman towed him into the far turn before Kentucky Outlaw pounced at the five-sixteenths pole, seizing control of the Long Branch at the quarter pole.

Kentucky Outlaw paid $5.80 to win as the narrow favorite over 2-1 Pascaline and clocked 1:41.08 for one mile and 70 yards over a fast track.

Kentucky Outlaw is by Outwork out of Fend, by Street Sense, and was bred in Kentucky by Daniel Thomas Kjorsvik. The Dunns purchased the horse at a 2-year-old auction for just $12,000, and Kentucky Outlaw romped in his sprint debut this past February at Parx Racing, the Dunns base. He scored an equally easy win going two turns in first-level allowance competition, then raced greenly and below his best finishing a well-beaten fifth in the Federico Tesio. The blinkers might have gotten the job done in the Long Branch. Everything trainer Felissa Dunn is doing this year seems to be working.

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