Surprisingly, it's Grayosh who gives Brown his 10th Matchmaker victory
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Chad Brown training the winner of the Matchmaker Stakes at Monmouth Park? Absolutely no surprise. Brown’s seventh straight winner of the race, Grayosh, paying almost $20? Pretty big surprise.
The betting market had the Grade 3, $300,000 Matchmaker as a match race between the Brown-trained City Girl and Sweet Treasure, but it was 8-1 fourth choice Grayosh and jockey Tyler Gaffalione running down 7-1 third choice Long Ago to win by one length.
Not only has Brown won every Matchmaker starting in 2020, he’s won eight of the last nine and 10 of the last 12 renewals of this 1 1/8-mile grass race for older fillies and mares,
City Girl, the 11-10 favorite over 13-10 Sweet Treasure, ran third in the Matchmaker about five minutes after Brown swept the top three placings in the Grade 1 Diana at Saratoga, a race in the same division.
City Girl was coming off a troubled fourth in the Grade 1 New York, but Grayosh had some credentials, too.
Two summers ago, she won the Lake Placid over 2025 champion female turf horse She Feels Pretty, and in last summer’s Matchmaker she finished third, beaten a neck by victorious Segesta, second Saturday in the Diana. Grayosh made her third start of the season and improved markedly upon her mild third last month at Monmouth in the Eatontown Stakes.
“I felt she had a little trouble in her last start,” Brown told Daily Racing Form’s David Grening from the Saratoga winner’s circle. “She had been training very well, and I actually left her at Monmouth. Maybe she didn’t ship as well last time, so she had reason to move up a couple of lengths today. Extra ground, everything.”
Gaffalione settled Grayosh in fourth, stalking several lengths behind a slow tempo going down the backstretch, and going into the far turn, hugging the rail and creeping forward, Gaffalione clearly had a lot of horse beneath him. City Girl, racing along the fence throughout, had alternated for the lead with 50-1 shot Creative Stuff, turning for home with a narrow advantage but working hard as Long Ago ranged up alongside her.
At the three-sixteenths marker, Gaffalione came off the rail, and as Sweet Treasure lost momentum he was able to work Grayosh outside and into the clear, with dead aim on City Girl and Long Ago at the furlong grounds. Grayosh took Long Ago’s measure seven strides from the finish and was pulling away at the wire, clocking 1:50.99 over a turf course that had taken rain earlier Saturday but still was rated firm.
Grayosh, a 5-year-old daughter of Yoshida and Rosie O’Prado, by Paddy O’Prado, campaigns for Flanagan Racing and was bred in Kentucky by Susan Bedwell. She won for the fourth time, her first Matchmaker, her trainer’s 10th.
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