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When Withgreatpleasure held off a late challenge to prevail by a head in the $60,000 Unbridled Belle Stakes at Delaware Park three weeks ago, she delighted her owner and trainer with the first stakes wins of their careers. On Labor Day, the 4-year-old filly has the chance to take them over the moon with their second stakes victory and first at their home base of Monmouth Park.

            Withgreatpleasure will have a big cheering section on hand when she runs in the $75,000 Lady’s Secret Stakes on Monday.

            “I had this race picked out at the beginning of the summer for her and to win it right here at home would be amazing,” said trainer David Nunn. “This would be the one race that the owners and I would appreciate the most.”

            The Valerie and David Blethen homebred earned five wins from 19 starts and has earned $306,949 in purses. In her only two prior starts at Monmouth, which were both stakes events, she teased her connections with a second in last year’s Serena’s Song Stakes and a third in the 2011 Grade 3 Monmouth Oaks. Now she’ll step onto the track as the possible favorite for the race named in honor of the 1986 Horse of the Year and member of the Hall of Fame.

            “She’s fantastic,” said Carly Colt, an assistant to Nunn. “She went out on the track this morning with the pony and couldn’t be any better. She’s the star around here. Everything revolves around ‘Big Mama’ and we’ve all put a lot of extra time into her and have worked really hard to keep her sound and as happy and as good as she can be.”

            Colt said that Withgreatpleasure is truly a pleasure to have in the barn.

            “She’s one of the most intelligent animals I have ever been around. She knows what she needs and she almost trains herself,” she said. “She’s a very competent and a very competitive horse. We schooled her in the paddock the other day and she was perfectly calm until she saw the other horses coming in for their race. Then she started pinning her ears and wanted to go out and run.”

            Should Withgreatpleasure win her second straight stakes race, there may be some celebrating afterward in Monmouth’s Lady’s Secret Café.

            “Bringing her home and winning the Lady’s Secret would be more than exciting,” said Douglas Nunn, David’s identical twin who also trains a string of horses at Monmouth. “To win his first stakes race at Monmouth in front of everybody would be fantastic for my brother. We’ll all be cheering for him.”