Code of Honor | Horse Racing Free Tips

‘Two Turns Is Better For Him’: Code Of Honor Tunes Up For Aug. 1 Whitney

Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey breezed two-time Grade 1 winner Code of Honor over the Oklahoma training track at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on Saturday morning in his first work since running third in the Grade 1 Runhappy Met Mile on July 4 at Belmont Park.

Owned by William S. Farish, the 4-year-old chestnut son of Noble Mission went five furlongs in company with stable mate and first-level allowance winner Creed, with both horses completing their moves in 1:01.93.

McGaughey plans on running Code of Honor in the Grade 1, $750,000 Whitney on August 1.

“They both worked excellent,” McGaughey said. “Code of Honor worked really, really well, I was really pleased. I was just looking to do a little something with Creed.”

McGaughey said that the Grade 2, $150,000 Jim Dandy on September 5 would be a target for Creed. Owned by Edward J. Hudson, Jr. and Lynne Hudson, the son of second-crop stallion Honor Code broke his maiden by 7 ¾ lengths on June 11 at Belmont Park before defeating winners over Big Sandy on July 2. Creed was purchased for $650,000 from the 2018 Keeneland September Yearling Sale.

In the Met Mile, Code of Honor was a late-closing third, finishing a 1 1/2 lengths to Vekoma.

McGaughey believes that Code of Honor, winner of last year's Grade 1 Runhappy Travers and Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup, is more suited for the Whitney's 1 1/8-mile distance.

“He didn't get the best trip,” McGaughey said of the Met Mile. “Two turns is better for him, especially now that he's older, but I thought he ran really well. They went really fast, he had a wide trip. The winner had a dream trip over a speed-favoring track, so I thought it was all good.”

Code of Honor will attempt to become the first horse to win the Travers and the Whitney since Medaglia d'Oro did so respectively in 2002 and 2003. McGaughey will go for his fourth Whitney triumph having saddled Honor Code (2015), Easy Goer (1989) and Personal Ensign (1988) to victory.

A Kentucky homebred, Code of Honor is out of the graded stakes-winning Dixie Union broodmare Reunited.

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McKinzie Headlines Loaded Runhappy Met Mile

A talented and deep field of eight will line up for Saturday’s highly anticipated 127th renewal of the GI Runhappy Metropolitan H. at Belmont Park.

An unlucky second behind the mighty Mitole (Eskendereya) in last year’s contest, ‘TDN Rising Star’ McKinzie (Street Sense) figures to vie for favoritism. He was first or second in all seven of his starts in 2019, led by a win in Saratoga’s GI Whitney S. and a runner-up finish in the GI Breeders’ Cup Classic.

The four-time Grade I winner made up for a dismal performance in the inaugural $20-million Saudi Cup Feb. 29 with a good-looking victory in the seven-furlong GII Triple Bend S. at Santa Anita June 7. Hall of Famer Mike Smith makes the trip from Southern California to guide the 2-1 morning-line favorite.

“I think any time you win a Grade I on the East Coast it’s pretty important, especially at Belmont and Saratoga. It’s like hitting a home run in Yankee Stadium, it means something,” Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert said.

“His comeback race was just perfect. If he brings his ‘A game,’ that’s what we’re looking for. He’s doing really well.”

Code of Honor (Noble Mission {GB}), winner of last year’s GI Runhappy Travers S. and GI Jockey Club Gold Cup S. over subsequent Classic hero Vino Rosso (Curlin) via disqualification, kicked off his 4-year-old campaign with a well-timed decision over Endorsed (Medaglia d’Oro) in the GIII Westchester S. in the Belmont mud June 6.

“He just grew up physically in his body and his mind,” Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey said. “He’s gotten more aggressive and he’s caught onto what it’s all about now. He was still figuring things out last year, especially earlier in the year. Everything he’s done this year has been good. He acts like he’s ready to run.”

Moved up to second via disqualification in the GI Kentucky Derby, Code of Honor is three for four at Belmont Park, including a track-and-trip score in last July’s GIII Dwyer S.

Vekoma (Candy Ride {Arg}), well-beaten in last year’s Kentucky Derby, has found his niche racing around one turn this term. A sharp winner of Gulfstream’s Sir Shackleton S. Mar. 28, the chestnut realized a career high while earning a gaudy 110 Beyer Speed Figure with a jaw-dropping victory over Network Effect (Mark Valeski) in a sloppy renewal of the GI Runhappy Carter H. in Elmont June 6. Both wins were at seven furlongs.

The Runhappy Met Mile offers a free berth to the GI Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in November at Keeneland.

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Weekend Lineup: Met Mile Again Brings Marquee Names Together

Throughout the year, the NTRA will provide a guide to the best stakes races in North America and beyond. Races are listed in chronological order (all times Eastern). Full previews when available can be found through the link for each race.

The Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap, which offers a berth in the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile in November at Keeneland, headlines a stellar card offering five graded stakes on Saturday at Belmont Park. Slated as Race 9 on Saturday's 11-race card, the Met Mile will be featured live on NBC from 5 – 6 p.m ET. Saturday's one-hour program will also include the G3 Poker Stakes, featuring Eclipse Award finalist Got Stormy.

America's Day at the Races, produced by the New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) in partnership with FOX Sports, returns on FOX Sports and MSG+ for holiday coverage and analysis of the best in Thoroughbred racing from Belmont Park. The national telecast will air through Sunday on FS1, FS2 and MSG+, highlighted by the blockbuster Met Mile card.

TVG will be live on site for opening weekend at Monmouth Park and will feature holiday racing from across the country including the Grade 3, $150,000 Los Alamitos Derby on Saturday. On both Saturday and Sunday morning, fans of international racing can tune in for world class racing from England featuring the return of champion Enable (GB) who will try to defend her title in the Group 1 Coral-Eclipse Stakes. Post time is 10:35 a.m. ET.

Saturday July 4

2:24 p.m.—$100,000 Grade 3 Victory Ride Stakes at Belmont Park on FS1

Two-time winner Reagan's Edge will make her stakes debut against four other sophomore fillies in the 18th running of the Victory Ride going 6 ½ furlongs. Trained by Cherie DeVaux, Reagan's Edge was a runaway nine-length debut winner going six furlongs on September 24 at Indiana Grand Race Course defeating next-out winners Competitive Fire and Pranked. Following a six-month layoff, the chestnut daughter of second crop-sire Competitive Edge was third beaten 5 ½ lengths in her seasonal bow before defeating winners with a last-to-first rally in a first-level Churchill Downs allowance race on May 16.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/BEL070420USA3-EQB.html

4:45 p.m.—$300,000 Grade 3 Delaware Oaks at Delaware Park on TVG

Graded stakes winner Comical seeks to end a seven-race losing skid when she breaks from the rail in a field of eight for the 1 1/16-mile Delaware Oaks. Trained by Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen, Comical last visited the winner's circle when she captured the G3 Schuylerville Stakes at Saratoga last July. The daughter of Into Mischief most recently finished second in the Gardenia Stakes at Oaklawn Park May 1.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/DEL070420USA-EQB.html#RACE8

4:46 p.m.—$175,000 Grade 2 Eclipse Stakes at Woodbine on TVG

The Eclipse, run at 1 1/16 miles on the Toronto oval Tapeta, has attracted seven hopefuls for the 65th running of the stakes for 4-year-olds and up. Three-time stakes winner Cooler Mike, a 5-year-old son of Giant Gizmo, goes after his first graded stakes title. Bred and owned by father and son duo Mike and Nick Nosowenko, the gelding is one of the most consistent competitors on the Woodbine grounds, having assembled a 6-4-5 record from 21 career starts.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/WO070420CAN8-EQB.html

5:13 p.m.—$150,000 Grade 3 Poker Stakes at Belmont Park on NBC

Gary Barber's Got Stormy will once again take on the boys as she looks for the first win of her 2020 campaign in Saturday's Poker Stakes, a one-mile turf test for older horses. In August, Got Stormy became the first filly to win the G1 Fourstardave, in its 35th running, besting the boys at one mile over a firm inner turf in a track record 1:32 flat at Saratoga Race Course. Trained by Hall of Famer Mark Casse, Got Stormy would face males in her next two starts finishing second in both the G1 Woodbine Mile, over soft going, and G1 Breeders' Cup Mile at Santa Anita.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/BEL070420USA8-EQB.html

5:15 p.m.—$125,000 Grade 3 Kent Stakes at Delaware Park on TVG

Otter Bend's Gufo tops the G3 Kent Stakes at Delaware Park, a 1 1/8-mile grass affair which has attracted a field of eight 3-year-olds. Gufo will try to extend his current winning streak to four. The Kentucky-bred trained by Christophe Clement, started his career with a third in an Aqueduct turf maiden on Nov. 17 and followed with three successive turf victories all at Gulfstream Park. In his most recent, he won the $75,000 English Channel Stakes on May 2.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/DEL070420USA9-EQB.html

5:47 p.m.—$500,000 Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park on NBC

An eight-horse field boasting a combined 20 graded stakes victories, led by Grade 1-winning multimillionaires Code of Honor and McKinzie, make up a talented group assembled for Saturday's 127th running of the Grade 1 Met Mile. Code of Honor, a $2.4-million earner and winner of last year's Grade 1 Travers Stakes and Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup, continued to build on his graded stakes winning form in his 2020 bow when scoring a victory in the Grade 3 Westchester Stakes on June 6. Owned by Mike Pegram, Karl Watson and Paul Weitman, McKinzie was a troubled second beaten three-quarters of a length to eventual champion Mitole in last year's running of the Met Mile, where he lacked racing room down the stretch, found a hole to the inside of runners and made a late move to complete the exacta.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/BEL070420USA9-EQB.html

6:20 p.m.—$400,000 Grade 1 Manhattan Stakes at Belmont Park on FS1

Sadler's Joy has twice finished in the money in the Grade 1 Manhattan and will look to earn a trip to the winner's circle in the race's 119th edition on Saturday. Sadler's Joy has come tantalizing close to a Manhattan win for trainer Tom Albertrani, finishing a neck behind Spring Quality as part of a blanket finish in 2018. The year prior, the son of Kitten's Joy ran third, 1 ½-lengths back to winner Ascend. Off a three-month layoff, Sadler's Joy returned to New York to run third in the 1 3/8-mile Tiller Stakes on June 4 at Belmont.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/BEL070420USA10-EQB.html

6:28 p.m.—$150,000 Grade 3 Los Alamitos Derby at Los Alamitos on TVG

Hall of Famer Bob Baffert has two of the five entrants in the 1 1/8-mile Los Alamitos Derby including graded stakes winner Thousand Words. Thousand Words won his first three starts and earned his first graded victory when he prevailed in the G2 Los Alamitos Futurity last December. The bay colt is winless in three starts this year.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/LRC070420USA6-EQB.html

6:51 p.m.—$200,000 Grade 2 Suburban Stakes at Belmont Park on FS1

Saturday's Suburban Stakes, a 1 1/4-mile test, will feature the one-two-three finishers of last year's G1 Belmont Stakes as Sir Winston, Tacitus and Joevia renew their rivalry. Tracy Farmer's Sir Winston, trained by Hall of Famer Mark Casse, was a 10-1 upset winner of the 2019 Belmont Stakes, outkicking Tacitus for a one-length win. Sir Winston made a successful seasonal debut with a 2 ¼-length score in an optional-claiming mile at Aqueduct Racetrack on Jan. 31. After traveling for the Dubai World Cup, which was cancelled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Sir Winston made his belated return on June 11 on a sloppy Belmont strip in the 1 3/8-mile Flat Out, running second by 5 ¼-lengths to Suburban rival Moretti.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/BEL070420USA11-EQB.html

7:28 p.m.—$200,000 Grade 2 Great Lady M. Stakes at Los Alamitos on TVG

Multiple Grade 1-winner Bellafina headlines a field of seven entered for the 6 ½-furlong Great Lady M. Stakes. Trained by Simon Callaghan, Bellafina enters off a victory in the Grade 3 Desert Stormer Stakes at Santa Anita Park on May 17. That win was the first for the daughter of Quality Road since her triumph in the 2019 G1 Santa Anita Oaks.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/LRC070420USA8-EQB.html

Sunday July 5

8:35 p.m.—$100,000 Grade 3 Iowa Oaks at Prairie Meadows on TVG

The Steve Asmussen-trained Strong Flag and stakes winner Dynasty of Her Own head up a field of seven entered for the 1 1/16-mile Iowa Oaks. Dynasty of Her Own, trained by Jonathan Wong, won the California Oaks in her most recent start on May 31 while Strong Flag seeks her first victory since breaking her maiden at Oaklawn Park on March 15.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/PRM070520USA9-EQB.html

9:02 p.m.—$100,000 Grade 3 Prairie Meadows Cornhusker Handicap at Prairie Meadows on TVG

Night Ops, the 5-2 morning-line favorite, aims to get back on track following a ninth-place run in Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap on May 2. Trained by Brad Cox, Night Ops won the Essex Handicap at Oaklawn Park on March 14 after scoring an allowance victory earlier in the meet. Sir Anthony won last year's Cornhusker Handicap but is winless in four starts since.

Entries: https://www.equibase.com/static/entry/PRM070520USA10-EQB.html

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This Side Up: Derby and Met Mile: Two Sides of the Same Coin

We are increasingly familiar with the kind of traction even the most brazen untruth can achieve in the era of social media. I guess people either no longer believe in hell, or they’ve decided they’re headed there anyway.

But let’s not kid ourselves that we were ever especially diligent in authenticating what we read in the Good Old Days of hot-metal print. How apt, for instance, that a highly pertinent observation long credited to Mark Twain–that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”–should instead turn out to have a convoluted ancestry extending three centuries. Sure enough, perhaps the most famous quotation of the Turf is still almost universally misattributed.

The G1 Investec Derby may be a month later than usual, and with hardly anyone present, but you can guarantee one thing won’t have changed. Round the world, people will again be recycling the “famous” dictum of Federico Tesio: “The Thoroughbred racehorse exists because its selection has depended not on experts, technicians or zoologists, but one piece of wood: the winning post of the Epsom Derby.”

While that was evidently Tesio’s belief, the words actually belong to his business partner and biographer, Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta. It’s a typical instance of how Don Mario, with his charm and elegant prose, managed to render accessible the inscrutable genius of his late friend. Few who today profess reverence for Tesio have much sense of the idiosyncrasies that governed his unarguable legacy to the breed. Certainly some of his less scientific instincts could never have warranted general application.

But his faith in the Derby, as the definitive test of the assets we should replicate in the breed, is unimpeachable. And if we owe the axiom itself to Don Mario–whether paraphrasing some remembered exchange, or just giving felicitous expression to observed behaviour–then it is one that has united breeders across the centuries.

In fact, the Derby and the breed evolved almost in tandem. The first Derby over a mile and a half was run in 1784; the first attempt at some formal registration of what evolved into the Thoroughbred was the Introduction to a General Stud Book, just seven years later. And we have long grasped why this should be: how the track configuration and the race distance together demand an optimal equilibrium–both between speed and stamina, and also in the more literal sense of athletic balance.

The 2001 winner is certainly doing his bit for the Derby as the ultimate genetic signpost. True, Galileo (Ire) must this time settle for just the five runners in his quest for that fifth winner, to secure outright a record he shares with five others. Nonetheless his own sire Sadler’s Wells still casts a long shadow. Montjeu (Ire)’s son Camelot (GB) is the sire of English King (Fr), whose discovery for €210,000 at Arqana is only the latest proof of Jeremy Brummitt’s flair for tasks that baffle so many other prospectors. High Chaparral (Ire)’s son Free Eagle (Ire) has outsider Khalifa Sat (Ire) while Kameko, as a Classic winner already, shows how scandalous has been the general European neglect (David Redvers an honorable exception) of Kitten’s Joy.

That’s a point I have labored sufficiently for now, though it’s also good to see George Strawbridge’s home-bred Point of Entry colt Worthily fast-tracked from a debut success only three weeks ago. Albeit both are by pretty unequivocal turf stallions, success for either of these U.S.-breds would have me banging with renewed insistence on the same drum as in this space last week.

I had lots of interesting feedback on the observations I made then, including some inspired guesses regarding the anonymous European agent with such infuriating misapprehensions about the American Thoroughbred. If he (or his patrons!) have also managed his identification, then let me add a fresh provocation–which is that a future Derby winner might more feasibly be sired by the winner of the GI Runhappy Metropolitan H. than by the winner of the GI Manhattan S., over turf and a longer route on the same card.

That’s because pretty much the same attributes have helped to make the reputation of both the Met Mile and the Derby as “stallion-making” races. Both put a premium on carrying speed–which, as I said last week, is the defining hallmark that should again interest European breeders in dirt stallions generally. This Sadler’s Wells hegemony at Epsom, after all, started with the son of a Kentucky Derby winner.

And few horses carry speed like a Met Mile winner. Because there’s no doubt that a mile round a single turn showcases very different merits. Two turns relieve a horse from flat-out commitment (besides also introducing an extra crapshoot quality in the draw). The Met Mile is an extended sprint, with zero opportunity for a breather. It brings together dashers and Classic types in a challenge that discloses precisely the versatility, toughness, lungs and class we should be breeding to.

It will be fascinating, in this whole context, to see how Noble Mission (GB)’s son Code of Honor gets on today. He is, on paper, turf-bred-but Noble Mission, just like his brother Frankel, always ran in a fashion ideally tailored to dirt. Having shown Classic caliber round two turns, Code Of Honor now bids to make a renewed nuisance of himself to Vekoma (Candy Ride {Arg}): they were foaled in the same Lane’s End barn, within 24 hours, and Code of Honor has finished ahead in both of Vekoma’s career defeats.

Eventually a race’s reputation for making stallions will become self-sustaining. Everyone sees the resonant names strewn across the Met Mile roll of honor–from Native Dancer to Buckpasser to Fappiano to Ghostzapper to Quality Road–and wants to earn a share of that legacy at stud. That’s why, for instance, recent Belmont winners Palace Malice and Tonalist each returned to New York the following summer for the Met Mile (finishing first and second, respectively).

Of course, there will be the occasional dud. But you have to ask what else might have been lost to the American breed in the export of Eskendereya, responsible for two of the last three winners (graduating from his first three crops). Because a race that permits no hiding place will tend to disclose something authentic.

It’s rare even for an elite race to be quite so unrelenting, so unsparing. Yet Saturday we have one staged either side of the ocean. They could not look more different, but neither will compromise in making their conflicting demands. There can be no half-measures; just a perfect blend. And that, you might say, is the long and the short of it.

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