Scalable rallies past Gun Song to take Monmouth Oaks
After hinting for quite a while at having graded-stakes potential, Scalable finally delivered on that promise.
Winless in five previous graded tries, the Todd Pletcher-trained filly outfinished 3-2 favorite Gun Song after a furious late rally Saturday to win the 100th edition of the Grade 3, $250,000 Monmouth Oaks by three-quarters of a length at Monmouth Park.
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The 3-year-old Kentucky-bred daughter of Speightstown followed the move of Gun Song coming out of the final turn in the 1 1/16-mile race and then prevailed in a three-horse stretch duel that included Little Jamie.
At the sixteenth pole Little Jamie was the first to give way, leaving the remaining stretch battle to Scalable and Gun Song, the winner of the Black-Eyed Susan (G2) at Pimlico.
Little Jamie held for third, 1 3/4 lengths behind Gun Song.
The winning time was 1:44.71 on the fast main track.
“She’s been here a while now and has been training really good,” said Anthony Sciametta, who oversees Pletcher’s Monmouth Park division. “Once she was able to get to the outside, that’s really all she needed. It was an impressive race from her.”
Winless in three starts at 2, Scalable posted her third win in six starts this year. She came in off a win in a $100,000 optional claimer at Churchill Downs on June 29.
Owned by Repole Stable, Scalable paid $8.60 to win.
A late runner, Scalable was positioned third and fourth early in the eight-horse field by jockey Paco López with the early fractions going in 24.55, 48.72 and 1:13.03.
Little Jamie made the first move after first conceding the lead to Yes to Champagne, taking control midway through the final turn. She was followed immediately by Gun Song and then Scalable right behind the two of them with the rest of the field out of it.
“We were able to sit behind horses up the backstretch, and she was going well,” López said. “Once we angled out around the far turn, she really started to pick it up. In the stretch (Gun Song) was tough, but we pushed by, and she finished up well.”
In her five previous graded-stakes starts Scalable only hit the board once, although she was a respectable fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile fillies last year.