Hindsight - 2025 Cliff Hanger Stakes

Published on: 2025-05-25

Written by Colin

** DISCLAIMER: Don’t bet any real money based on anything in this post. It’s not financial advice… duh. **

Get the free race of the day from Equibase

When I don’t have time to look at the free race of the day PP’s from Equibase before the race starts, I’m going to be doing these “Hindsight” posts instead. They’ll be after the race is over, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that I don’t know what the heck happened.

The Race

Track: Monmouth Park

Race Number: 9

Distance: 1 1/16 miles

Surface: Turf

Class: Stakes

Purse: $100k

Age: 3UP

Initial thoughts

This seems to be a competitive race where most of the horses are fit for the turf and the distance. A few stand out to me though!

The Runners

• (1) Signator is a closer with back-to-back wins. I think the M/L odds of 5-1 would be nice.
• (3) There Are No Words has been in the money (ITM) 66% lifetime, a great track record especially given the back class in 2023 and 2024. Coming off of a layoff since October, so it’s hard to tell if that will help or hurt here.
• (4) Belouni (FR) is a stalker/presser with wins at the allowance level recently. Higher speed figures after being gelded.
• (8) He’spuregold is fit for this stakes class and has the speed to go with it.
• (9) Fulmineo has only been out-of-the-money in a couple graded stakes races that were probably a bit too much of a reach for him. With the Cliff Hanger being a lower class race to those, it could be right in his wheelhouse. At M/L odds of 8-1, this one appears to be an overlay compared to the lower odds runners.

Fulmineo would be my opinion of a value bet in this race, and I would’ve taken him for the win. There Are No Words is a close second due to the high speed figures, class, and ITM rate. Let’s see what happened!

The Results

Full Replay from Monmouth Park on Youtube

Commentary:

Welp… really messed that one up. Super surprised to see that There Are No Words went off at 22-1 odds, but the fade into the homestretch really validated the public’s opinion. I’d be curious to see if the second start off the layoff will be better.

Fulmineo went off at 6-1 and then started poorly. He ran just outside of the eventual winner, Otago, the whole way. Even though he stuck with the field for most of the race, he had zero kick compared to the horses that made it to the podium. Definitely not the closer that I expected.

Overall, I definitely discounted the PP’s of Otago, Highestdistinction, and Forever Souper, anticipating less kick than they gave.

Onto the next one… Thank goodness this was just for fun or I’d be out on the street once again.