Mendelssohn Filly Leads Home Coolmore-Sired Ontario Damsel Exacta

Stakes placed Shotgun Wedding (3f Mendelssohn x Reluctant Bride, by Speightstown) earned her first stakes win on Saturday when she beat TIz The Law’s Tiz The Money by three quarters in the Ontario Damsel Stakes.

The 1 1/8-mile synthetic surface race at Woodbine saw Shotgun Wedding race in midpack about five lengths off the leader early on. Happy to relax as the runners ahead of her battled it out, she advanced with three furlongs left to run and fully entered the fray from there.

She slipped between the leaders as they entered the final quarter and was clearly in front a furlong later. Tiz The Money closed well from last place, but Shotgun Wedding had too much left near the line and kept that one behind her.

Shotgun Wedding is trained by James Bentley Begg for Windways Farm, Begg Racing, and Upland Flats Racing, with three wins and six other top three finishes in 12 starts. The earner of $185,066 was also third in last year’s Catch a Glimpse Stakes.

The filly is the first foal of racing age out of two-time winner Reluctant Bride. That Speightstown daughter is out of dual Grade I winner Sassy Image, whose four winners include 15-time winner V J Day.

This is also the family of Grade I winner Dia De Otono, Grade II winner Extensive, and 14 other stakes performers.

Reluctant Bride has a yearling filly by Epicenter to come.

Mendelssohn is the sire of 156 winners in 2025, with eight stakes winners and 25 stakes performers with those 25 stakes performers tying him with both Justify and American Pharoah.