Mopo breaks through in Jameela Stakes at Laurel Park
Mopo finally broke through in the $100,000 Jameela Stakes at Laurel Park, surging past Gift of Gab in a half-length win for Maury Povich's filly.
Mopo had knocked on the door at stakes level before, but at Laurel Park she finally kicked it in. The 4-year-old filly, owned by retired television personality Maury Povich under the Mopo Racing banner, won the $100,000 Jameela Stakes by half a length on June 20, giving trainer Phil Capuano and rider Forest Boyce a breakthrough in Race 7 on the card.
The win came the right way for a filly trying to find her ceiling. On firm turf at six furlongs, Mopo settled into an outside stalking trip behind a lively pace, with Malibu Hooch and Big Earn carving out the opening quarter in 22.94 seconds and the half in 45.44. Boyce kept Mopo within striking range, and when Big Earn moved clear, Gift of Gab briefly got the jump. Mopo answered in the final 70 yards and finished strongly in 1:08.50, with Gift of Gab second, 2 1/2 lengths ahead of Big Earn. Boujee Bubblez, Sporting Lady, Malibu Hooch and Gold Digging Broad completed the order.
For Capuano, it was a meaningful stakes milestone. The Jameela was only his second stakes winner, following Alwaysinahurry in the 2023 Frank Y. Whiteley Stakes, and Mopo’s effort suggested she may have found the level that fits. The Maryland-bred daughter of Great Notion out of the Distorted Humor mare Perverse entered off a runner-up finish in a Laurel allowance on June 5 and an allowance win there on May 2, both signs that her spring turf form was sharpening. Prior to the Jameela, she had already won on turf at Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course, and this latest step up showed she could turn that local consistency into black-type success.
The victory also fit the race’s long Maryland-bred context. The Jameela Stakes, inaugurated in 1983 and named for the first Maryland-bred horse to earn more than $1 million, has always carried a sense of lineage. Jameela later became a two-time Maryland-bred Horse of the Year and produced Gulch, a Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner and Eclipse Award champion sprinter. This year’s edition, co-featured with the Ben’s Cat Stakes and restricted to registered Maryland-bred or -sired and Virginia-bred or -sired runners, gave Mopo a stage that matched her background.
The time was solid, though not close to the Laurel six-furlong turf record of 1:07.29 set by Jazzy Idea in 2012. But records were not the point. For Povich’s filly, the Jameela looked less like a one-off than a signal that she has finally found her lane, and Laurel Park may have seen the start of a real stakes campaign.
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