Money Supply takes fifth consecutive victory with Mineshaft

Money Supply, claimed last summer for $35,000 by owner Jordan Wycoff and trainer Joe Sharp, ran down odds-on favorite Best Actor to win the Grade 3, $250,000 Mineshaft Stakes on Saturday at Fair Grounds.

Money Supply won his fifth straight while starting for only the second time in stakes competition. In April 2022, racing for his previous connections, Klaravich Stable and trainer Chad Brown, Money Supply had finished fifth in the Lafayette Stakes at Keeneland.

A sloppy, sealed racing surface surely boosted Money Supply’s chances as the 5-year-old horse was coming off a muddy-track win in an Oaklawn Park second-level allowance race that had been preceded by another victory in the Fair Grounds slop.

Equally helpful for the winner: A brutal speed duel that left Best Actor vulnerable in the late stages. Best Actor made the lead under Flavien Prat, but was hounded around the clubhouse turn and down the backstretch by Dubyuhnell and Gasoline, who turned up the heat passing the half-mile pole into the far turn. Best Actor set taxing splits of 23.92 and 46.97, and after going six furlongs in 1:11.56, he had shrugged off his pace rivals.

Tyler Gaffalione, taking the Money Supply mount for the first time in five starts, saved ground while racing fifth around the far turn, and approaching the five-sixteenths pole he was traveling much better than anyone else trying to reel-in the leader. Coming about four paths wide, Money Supply drew nearly abreast of Best Actor at the sixteenth pole, and while Best Actor did not go down without a fight, he did go down.

“He keeps improving. He put me in a great spot. The speed duel set up in front of us,” Gaffalione said in a televised post-race interview.

Gasoline stayed on solidly to finish third, 3 3/4 lengths behind Best Actor and a neck in front of Red Route One. Smile Happy was nearly six lengths farther back in fifth, followed by Hayes Strike, Happy American, and Dubyuhnell. Notary was scratched.

Money Supply, a son of Practical Joke and Evita’s Sister, by Candy Ride, clocked 1:44.04 and paid $20.20.

Money Supply was coming back from a layoff of more than four months and had but one win from nine starts when Sharp dropped the claim at Saratoga on Aug. 20. He ran back just six days later and finished sixth, but since then is unbeaten in five starts. He earned his connections $150,000 on Saturday.

“As we raise the bar, he keeps stepping forward,” Sharp said. “I told Tyler, ‘He’s a different horse than the last time you rode him. He’ll put you in the race a little quicker.”

And was up in the nick of time.

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