Ozara opens 2026 in Miss Liberty Stakes after six-month layoff

Ozara’s 2026 season opened as a statement of intent, not a tune-up, with the Grade 2 winner returning in Monmouth Park’s Miss Liberty Stakes after a six-month layoff. Christopher Clement has framed the five-year-old Irish-bred daughter of Lope de Vega as a mare for a bigger summer and fall, and the way she was handled through Payson Park and Saratoga suggested this was the first move in a longer plan.

The Monmouth turf mile-and-a-sixteenth gave Ozara a familiar kind of assignment. She entered with a career mark of 15 starts, 7 wins, 2 seconds and 2 thirds, along with $606,882 in earnings, and she had already shown she can hold her form deep into a season. In 2025 she made eight starts, won four times and banked $327,975, highlighted by a 1 1/2-length victory in the Ballston Spa Stakes at Saratoga Race Course on Aug. 8. Her final outing before the layoff came in the Grade 1 Matriarch Stakes at Del Mar on Nov. 30, a reminder that Clement has been placing her in graded company rather than easing her back through lesser spots.

The Miss Liberty fit that approach because it offered a useful test of where Ozara stands against older turf fillies and mares. The $100,000 stake was run at 1 1/16 miles on turf, with older fillies and mares assigned 124 pounds and 3-year-olds 121. Ozara carried 118, a break Clement viewed as a significant advantage in a race that often rewards tactical speed and finishing punch. For a mare with graded-stakes credentials, it was less about the purse than about whether she could reestablish herself as a durable, versatile stakes player.

The race also mattered as part of a broader Monmouth weekend built around turf. The Miss Liberty sat on the same eight-race card as the Cliff Hanger Stakes and the Jersey Derby, part of a stretch that gave the shore track five grass races and a clear identity heading into summer. Monmouth’s 2026 stakes schedule lists the Miss Liberty as a Listed race on May 24, with the Cliffhanger Stakes on May 23 and the Jersey Derby on May 30, reinforcing how the meet is using its turf stakes to shape the season’s narrative.

There was another layer to the story in the barn. Ozara runs for Cheyenne Stable LLC, the operation of Oklahoma businessman Everett Dobson, who has owned and raced Thoroughbreds since 1996 and remains active in industry leadership. Miguel Clement has carried the family stable forward since the death of Christophe Clement in May 2025, and Ozara’s return fit the kind of measured, ambitious program that has defined the operation. Her comeback did not answer every question, but it clarified the stakes: this was the start of a campaign meant to say she belongs with the best older turf mares again.