Paid Up Subscriber

Paid Up Subscriber debuted during her 3-year-old year at Keeneland Race Couse, where she finished third but was disqualified to fifth. In her next start, Paid Up Subscriber showed the 2015 Kentucky Oaks day crowd that she was one to pay attention to when she broke her maiden by two lengths in the final race of the day. From there, Paid Up Subscriber won an allowance race at Saratoga with a then-career best 95 Equibase Speed Figure.

Not surprisingly, after two victories Paid Up Subscriber was challenged with a step up to stakes company and competed in the 2015 Prioress Stakes. While running into Cavorting (a fellow 2016 Win and You’re In winner for the Distaff) kept her from prevailing in the race, she was only a nose away from getting her first stakes-placing when Fusaichi Red was just able to hold her off for third. Paid Up Subscriber ended her 3-year-old season with a ninth-place finish in the Grade 2 Raven Run Stakes at Keeneland at seven furlongs.

In 2016, Paid Up Subscriber stretched out and seemed to relish the additional distance.

She started her season in a 6 ½-furlong allowance/optional claiming race at Keeneland, where she finished third to two graded stakes-placed horses while beaten by only 1 ¼ lengths. From there, she was entered in a race longer than seven furlongs for the first time in another allowance/optional claiming race, this one at Churchill Downs, going one mile.

No farther back than 2 ½ lengths behind the leader at any point, Paid Up Subscriber had to steady near the quarter pole, losing her momentum. But jockey Florent Geroux angled her to the outside as the field entered the stretch and she was able to grab the lead and pull away close to the finish line to win by a length.

The win had her connections willing to stretch her out another furlong in the Grade 2 Fleur de Lis Handicap. Taking on a tough field that included champion Untapable and Grade 1-placed Engaginglee among five stakes-winning or stakes-placed entrants, Paid Up Subscriber was the only filly who had not won or placed in a stakes race in the test.

Sitting two lengths off Big Book first then Ahh Chocolate when she took over the lead, Paid Up Subscriber moved up with the rest of the field at the top of the stretch, where it looked like anyone could win the race. Jockey Ricardo Santana Jr. encouraged Paid Up Subscriber to go between horses and the pair took over the lead. From there, it was just waiting to see how far Paid Up Subscriber would win by as she easily drew off to a three-length score for trainer Al Stall Jr. and owners Klaravich Stables and William H. Lawrence.

Following that breakthrough triumph, Paid Up Subscriber remained in graded stakes company for the rest of 2016 and into 2017, knocking heads with some of the top fillies and mares in training. She finished second in the Grade 1 Delaware Handicap and Madison Stakes among three remaining starts in 2016, and finished third and fourth her first two starts of 2017, before giving champion Songbird all she could handle in the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps Stakes on the Belmont Stakes undercard.

Paid Up Subscriber ran second by a length on that day, and then picked up her second graded stakes win in her next start with a blowout 32 ½-length score against two overmatched foes in the Grade 3 Shuvee Handicap on July 30 at Saratoga.