Mike previews the 2022 Matriarch Stakes (G1) from Del Mar, then gives his top picks & long shots. Last year’s winner Regal Glory will attempt to defend her title while making her final career start for trainer Chad Brown and Peter Brant, but can she end on a high note following 3 straight defeats? Tell us YOUR thoughts in the Comments section!
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The track press release:
Del Mar’s ninth Bing Crosby Season will finish strongly Sunday with a nine-race card enhanced by the 42nd edition of the Grade I, $400,000 Matriarch Stakes for fillies and mares as the highlight of the afternoon.
Adding additional luster to the fall finale is the Grade III, $100,000 Cecil B. DeMille for 2-year-olds.
The Matriarch, which goes as Race 7, will be headed by its defending champion, Peter Brant’s Regal Glory, a 6-year-old multi-millionaire mare who captured last year’s edition of the stakes by two and a half lengths in a front-running effort. All told, the sparkling daughter of Animal Kingdom has won 12 of her 22 starts – most of them stakes – and banked a total of $2,379,134.
Regal Glory ran one of the few lackluster races of her career last out in the Breeders’ Cup Mile against colts at Keeneland on November 5, but the fact that trainer Chad Brown put her on a plane headed west less than a month later speaks well of how she recovered from that effort. Top rider Flavien Prat has the call.
Brown has some serious history with the Matriarch at Del Mar. Of the eight runnings so far, he’s shipped in and sent out the winner four times. And he’ll be favored to do it again Sunday.
Here is the full field for the Matriarch in post position order, with riders and morning line odds:
- Fortune Racing’s Bipartisanship (Joe Bravo, 10-1)
- West Point Thoroughbreds, Mercedes Stables or Mooney, et al’s Emgland’s Rose (Victor Espinoza, 12-1)
- Reddam Racing’s Eddie’s New Dream (Mario Gutierrez, 20-1)
- Hronis Racing or West Point Thoroughbreds’ Gold for Kitten (Hector Berrios, 20-1)
- Rockingham Ranch or Talia Racing’s Hamwood Flier (Mike Smith, 5-1)
- Peter Brant’s Regal Glory (Flavien Prat, 8/5)
- Team Valor International or Gary Barber’s Wakanaka (Joel Rosario, 5-1)
- Bobby Flay’s Pizza Bianca (Umberto Rispoli, 6-1)
- Madaket Stables, Dubb, LaPenta and Caruso’s Dolce Zel (Irad Ortiz, Jr., 6-1)
- Benowitz, Madaket Stables or Wonder Stables, et al’s Avenue de France (Juan Hernandez, 15-1)
