Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Monomoy Girl puts win streak on line in Cotillion
This season’s leading 3-yearold fillies have performed at a very high level. They’ve been consistent, they’ve been durable. On Saturday, the Grade 1, $1 million Cotillion at Parx Racing will match the top three finishers from the Kentucky Oaks – Monomoy Girl, Wonder Gadot, and Midnight Bisou – and Test winner Separationofpowers.
The Oaks trio has put together a combined 2018 record of 11-5-4 from 21 starts, while earning more than $3.3 million. The lone off-the-board effort came in Wonder Gadot’s 10th-place finish in the Travers.
“She came out of it truly well,” trainer Mark Casse said. “She’s Wonder Woman.”
Monomoy Girl is a perfect 5 for 5 this year and a neck short of being undefeated in nine career starts. She has been expertly handled by 38-year-old Brad Cox, whose career has been on a rapid rise since 2014. The Louisville, Ky., native ranks fourth in the nation by training wins and sixth by earnings.
“It’s all because of our clientele,” Cox said. “We still claim a horse here and there, but we get most of our stock as young horses now. It’s been a great run.”
Monomoy Girl, a $100,000 Keeneland yearling buy, was just one of the group when she arrived at Cox’s barn at 2.
“She didn’t separate herself from the others right away,” he said. “She started to show what she could do last summer when she was working at Ellis Park, even though she didn’t have a lot of speed away from the gate.”
Cox started her out in turf races at Indiana Grand and Churchill Downs, not because he thought she was a grass horse but because she needed more distance than dirt races offered. She won both times.
“I started to get excited about her before her third start, leading up to the Rags to Riches,” Cox said. “I started dreaming about how good she could get.”
This year, Monomoy Girl has won the Rachel Alexandra, Ashland – Cox’s first Grade 1 win – Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks, Grade 1 Acorn, and Grade 1 Coaching Club American Oaks. Cox skipped the Alabama and freshened her for two big races to come, the Cotillion and Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
Monomoy Girl enters the Cotillion off a nine-week rest and six workouts.
“She’s ready,” Cox said. “This is not a prep. We are putting her on the plane to win the race. Her flesh, her coat are amazing. She’s training as well as ever.”
Midnight Bisou went into the Kentucky Oaks on a threerace win streak, including the Santa Anita Oaks. She broke a beat slowly and was bumped between horses at the start of the Kentucky Oaks and then was extremely wide into the stretch. She did well to finish third.
Transferred from Bill Spawr to Steve Asmussen following that race, Midnight Bisou has since won the 1 1/16-mile Mother Goose, been second by three lengths to Monomoy Girl in the 1 1/8-mile CCA Oaks, and finished third in the 1 1/4-mile Alabama.
The turn-back to 1 1/16 miles should suit her perfectly. She is unbeaten in three starts at the distance.
While shorter might be better for Midnight Bisou, that may not be the case for Wonder Gadot, who improved markedly when trainer Mark Casse added blinkers to her equipment and stretched her out to 1 1/4 miles against males in the Queen’s Plate at Woodbine. She romped in that race and the 1 3/16-mile Prince of Wales at Fort Erie before moving on to the Travers.
“I think her improvement was a combination of adding blinkers and getting her more distance,” Casse said. “The cutback in distance in the Cotillion is the big thing. I just don’t know how it will affect her. It’s a big concern.”
Separationofpowers will be making her third start of the year, all for Chad Brown, after coming out of her fourth-place finish in last year’s 1 1/16-mile Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies with an ankle chip.
She had a rough trip in her comeback, the 6 1/2-furlong Victory Ride at Belmont Park, when she stumbled and was checked at the start and then momentarily steadied in the stretch. She finished fourth, beaten 1 3/4 lengths.
Separationofpowers returned with a gritty performance to win the seven-furlong Test at Saratoga by a neck after bumping several times with runner-up Mia Mischief during a stretch battle. While Separationofpowers is unproven at 1 1/16 miles, she certainly sprints like a filly who wants more ground.
“Obviously, running against Monomoy Girl is a tall order because she’s so good and so proven, but I don’t see another option that makes more sense to me,” Brown said. “I want to find out now if this filly is even better going longer, which there’s a possibility she might be.”