Red Cross Stakes no easy task for Munnings Sister

OCEANPORT, N.J. – Munnings Sister takes a substantial class drop Sunday in the $70,000 Red Cross Stakes at Monmouth Park. It doesn’t mean the six-furlong stakes for fillies and mares will be easy pickings for the likely favorite.

The race drew a field of 10, with Ultimate Shopper and Lion D N A both cross-entered in the Grade 3 Bed o’ Roses Handicap on Saturday at Belmont Park. Even if those two run in New York, the Red Cross remains a solid contest.

Munnings Sister, trained by Barclay Tagg, is looking for her second stakes victory of the season. The 5-year-old captured the $75,000 Awesome Feather Stakes at Gulfstream Park in February. She tackled graded company in the next two races, starting with a trip to Santa Anita to set the pace in the Grade 3 Las Flores Stakes before settling for third. Her most recent outing came at Aqueduct, a fourth-place finish in the Grade 2 Distaff Handicap.

Paco Lopez, Monmouth’s leading rider, picks up the mount.

Geeky Gorgeous loves Monmouth. The homebred for trainer Danny Lopez is 7-3-3 in 14 starts here. She’ll be very tough if she runs in this spot.

Lopez blew her out Friday morning, a dazzling 34.60 seconds for the three furlongs. Afterward, Lopez was ambivalent about the Red Cross.

“I won’t decide until Saturday or perhaps race day,” Lopez said. “I want to see how she is the next day or so.”

The New Jersey-bred, a confirmed closer, would be wheeling back on short rest after running fourth in her season debut June 12, the $58,000 Dashing Beauty Stakes at Delaware Park.

“Everything was wrong on that day,” Lopez said. “Speed was golden, she laid too close being fresh, and she lost a shoe in the race.”

Pinot Grigio is in the best form of her career, starting the season with consecutive wins at Monmouth. The latest score was a dominant victory over statebreds June 1 in the Open Mind Handicap.

Co-owner, breeder, and trainer J. Willard Thompson traces the improvement to a combination of maturation for the 5-year-old and offseason surgery to repair an entrapped epiglottis.

“She seems to have come into herself, and the surgery seems to have helped,” said Thompson, who has a wine holder in the form of a horse guzzling a bottle of pinot grigio prominently displayed in his barn office.