Morning Matcha splashes to victory in the Staten Island. Susie Raisher/NYRA Photo
By Melissa Bauer-Herzog
The slop didn’t prove to be a problem for Central Banker’s Grade 1-placed daughter Morning Matcha with the 4-year-old romping home by 3 3/4 lengths in the $125,000 New York Stallion Stakes Series Staten Island Division at Aqueduct Sunday.
Breaking from the widest stall of all in the 7-furlong dirt race, Morning Matcha raced in last early on with Easy Play setting the pace. Six lengths separated the field after an opening quarter in :23.05, but the back markers were soon doing their part to close that gap.
As the field approached the turn, Morning Matcha and jockey Mychel Sanchez had one horse beat but zeroed in on the main pack in front of her. The leader was under pressure at that point with Bustin Bay pulling up to her hip halfway through the turn and others also looking to make runs at the lead.
Coming into the stretch, the eventual leader separated from the rest by a few paths as she raced down the center of the track. At that point, Easy Play gave in and Bustin Bay moved closer to Morning Matcha.
It was soon clear that the race would come down to those two but entering the final sixteenth, Morning Matcha showed why she’d gone off as the race favorite while easily pulling away. Lightly encouraged once she gained the lead, she won by 3 ¾ lengths in 1:23.78.
“We’re a very diverse outfit this weekend. It looked a little more even in the first couple races I watched today – horses had come off it, where yesterday it looked like you didn’t have any chance to come from off it,” said training Butch Reid, who won Saturday’s Go For Wand Stakes with the front-running Dr. B. “That’s the way this filly is. You can’t change her game. She doesn’t like to be rushed. She likes to be held together for the first quarter of a mile and then you can go ahead and do what you want with her.”
Owned by LC Racing, Cash Is King, and Gary Barber, the Crane Thoroughbred Services-bred Morning Matcha took her earnings to $899,740 with the victory. The $18,000 yearling purchase has won six races, five at Parx Racing near Philadelphia and one at Aqueduct.
“We have a lot of options, so it’s really worked out well so far in her career,” Reid said on the filly being New York-sired and Pennsylvania-bred.
The daughter of McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds’ Central Banker has finished in the top three in 19 of her 23 starts with those placings including 13 at the stakes level. The Staten Island was her second stakes win, but she finished second in last year’s Grade 1 Cotillion, was third in this year’s Grade 2 Delaware Handicap and entered Sunday off a third in the Turnback The Alarm last out.
Morning Matcha is one of three winners out of the multiple stakes-placed Home Ice, a California-bred who won four times in her home state. Also the dam of Central Banker’s placed daughter Center Ice, Home Ice is one of two stakes producers out of the stakes winning Hit a Homer Honey, with her winning half-sister producing stakes winner Cayambe and stakes placed Mmotombo.
New York’s leading sire the last two years, Central Banker looks to repeat in 2023. He leads all New York sires by progeny earnings, winners, stakes winners, and stakes performers with Morning Matcha his fourth stakes winner of the year.
