The way trainer Madison Meyers sees it, “It's Grateful's world and we're just living in it.”
And it's been a pretty good place to be over the past few years. The 5-year-old gelding, who Meyers says has a “mind of his own,” went to the front in Saturday's $75,000 Maryland Million Turf Sprint at Laurel Park in Laurel, Md., and never looked back, running away from 10 others under jockey Jevian Toledo to win the Sprint by 1 ½ lengths over Sky's Not Falling.
Owned and bred by Gordon Keyes, Grateful Bred covered the 5 ½ furlong turf course in 1:02.29. Grateful Bred has now won five of 11 starts and is five of nine at the distance.
Coming off a troubled fifth-place finish last time out in the Laurel Dash, Grateful Bred broke cleanly Saturday and Toledo took the son of Great Notion right to the front, setting fractions of :22.54 and :45.12 before driving home.
“It looked on paper like there wasn't that much speed in the race, and he's got a lot of speed so we just used his speed today to our advantage,” Toledo said. “He was so comfortable in front. When I asked him, he just took off. He was basically waiting for horses. We got a good trip and he got the job done.”
Meyers said the plan wasn't necessarily to take Grateful Bred to the front.
“If someone else had made [the lead] we probably would have sat off, but it was about playing the break and not getting hung up in traffic again,” she said. “It was unfortunate to get that wide last time out [in the Laurel Dash] and he was still only beaten a length. I was glad when I saw he had kicked clear.”
In the words of Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia, it was “fare you well” from there.
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