This Saturday's Grade 1, $750,000 Cigar Mile Handicap brings together a field of six, including two millionaires and one on the brink of achieving that status. Leading the field in achievements and earnings is Mind Control, winner of 11 races in his career and accounting for $1.7 million in earnings. Coming off a win (via disqualification) in the Parx Dirt Mile Stakes earlier this fall, Mind Control hopes to improve off his third place finish in the similar Grade 1 Carter Handicap this past spring.
Zandon is the other horse which has banked more than $1 million in his career, $1.4 million to be exact. His biggest win came this past April in the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes and he faces older horses for the first time off a runner-up effort in the Grade 1 Pennsylvania Derby.
Get Her Number ships in from California and appears capable of competing with these horses off a strong win 13 days ago. He proved to be top caliber in the fall of 2020 as a 2-year-old when winning the Grade 1 American Pharoah Stakes and may have regained that form.
White Abarrio brings a four-for-eight record into this race, most notably in the Grade 1 Florida Derby in April. He is also facing older horses for the first time.
Double Crown won the Grade 2 Kelso Stakes over the track and at the distance of the Cigar Mile last month, posting the huge upset at 42 to 1 odds, and hopes for a similar effort. Outlier rounds out the field, having run 40 times to date with eight wins but never in a stakes race.
Main win contenders:
Mind Control loves this track and loves these long one-turn races. In his 28 race career he's run the one mile trip five times, winning four of those races and finishing second in the other. Among that group he has run this one-turn mile trip twice, with a win and a runner-up effort. Jockey John Velazquez has been in the saddle for eight of the horse's 11 career wins including in the Salvator Mile Stakes this past June. That effort earned Mind Control a career-best 118 
Equibase® Speed Figure which towers over this field if repeated. The best figure earned by any of the others is 109, belonging to Zandon from his runner-up finishes in the Pennsylvania Derby and the Jim Dandy Stakes.
In his most recent race on Sept. 24, Mind Control battled head-and-head for the final three-eighths of a mile, leading with a sixteenth of a mile to go but beaten a neck on the wire. When the stewards determined the winner had interfered with Mind Control in the stretch, he was moved up to first, earning a 109 figure with that effort. Back over the track where he has a very strong record of 4-2-1 in seven races, Mind Control appears to be the horse to beat in this year's Cigar Mile Handicap.
Get Her Number has run only 14 times in his career as compared to 28 for Mind Control, but he has won five times so he fits nicely. Well regarded as a 2-year-old in the fall of 2020, Get Her Number won the important American Pharoah Stakes in only the third start of his career, beating a couple of talented colts in Rombauer and Spielberg in the process. Something kept him out of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile that year and away from the races for many months, but he was still highly regarded and returned on the Road to the Derby in the Rebel Stakes the following year. Following four poor efforts, Get Her Number was given eight months off and was no longer aiming at longer races, winning a sprint in March of this year in his comeback. Two races later the colt finished third in the Triple Bend Stakes, then ran even better in July of this year when second in the Bing Crosby Stakes with a career-best 108 figure. Following a poor effort in the Pat O'Brien Stakes in August, Get Her Number got another brief rest and repeated the 108 figure effort with a nice win. Now making his second start off a layoff and getting the services of red hot Luis Saez, coming off winning the riding title at Churchill Downs this fall, Get Her Number has a shot to run as well as Mind Control, and likely at higher odds.
White Abarrio was highly regarded early this year when on the Road to the Derby, winning both the Holy Bull Stakes and the Florida Derby with 102 and 100 figures, respectively. After a poor 16th place finish in the Kentucky Derby, White Abarrio rebounded somewhat when second in the Ohio Derby to earn a new career-best 106 figure. In his most recent start in the Pennsylvania Derby, White Abarrio set the pace for the first mile then faded to fifth. Rested a couple of months since and with a strong set of drills at trainer Saffie Joseph Jr.'s base in Florida, White Abarrio gets the services of North American leading jockey Irad Ortiz, Jr. This is significant because going back to Jan. 1 of 2021, when Ortiz, Jr. and Joseph team up for dirt races at Belmont and Aqueduct, they have a record of seven wins in eight races. Likely to be the controlling speed in this year's Cigar Mile, White Abarrio is not without a chance to add to those numbers.
The rest of the field, with their best Equibase Speed Figures, is Double Crown (98), Outlier (99), and Zandon (109), the latter who has every right to finish in-the-money as he has in all eight career races.
Win Contenders, in preference order:
Mind Control
Get Her Number
White Abarrio
Cigar Mile Handicap – Grade 1
Race 9 at Aqueduct
Saturday, December 3 – Post Time 3:43 PM E.T.
One Mile
Three Years Olds and Upward
Purse: $750,000
The post Equibase Analysis: Aqueduct-Loving Mind Control Deserves Top Billing In Cigar Mile appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
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