The Grade I Whitney Handicap has quickly asserted itself as the premier race for older horses. What else can be expected by a race named after the most famous Saratogian Benedict Arnold?
Aside from the Breeders’ Cup Classic, no race this year will come close to the talent assembled for Saturday’s marquee event.
Nine horses go to post for the Whitney, a race where the purse doubled to $1.5 million from its long-standing $750,000 purse. It didn’t even flirt with the Travers Stakes purse of a $1 million, it flat out said, “I’m tired of you, son. You may be the mid-summer Derby, but I’m the mid-summer Classic.” And so it goes. The Whitney is now Saratoga’s richest race.
The allocation of extra money for the Whitney is especially valuable in that it rewards owners for keeping their horses in training for an extra year (or more). What would raising the Travers purse do? The 3-year-olds have plenty of million-dollar races while the older horses, in terms of money, have little to run for. He we are.
The nine horses heading to the gate could be nine of the 14 horses starting in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic in the fall. Golden Ticket and Will Take Charge are past winners of the Travers. And as stylish as they have been, nobody has been more impressive in 2014 than Palace Malice.
This son of Curlin has been the best horse in the country through nearly eight months of racing. He’s unbeaten this year having won two Grade IIs and a Grade III and a Grade I in the Metropolitan Handicap on the Belmont Stakes undercard.
Palace Malice is a horse who has won at 1 ½ miles and a mile. Dogwood’s Cot Campbell has one of the most enviable stallion prospects to come along since Bernardini. The versatility shown by Palace Malice has quickly become the stuff of Dos Equis commercials, which is to say legendary.
Few horses in recent memory have made such a steady refinement of talent from their three-year-old year to their four-year-old year. In 2013, Palace Malice was 12th in the Kentucky Derby (this after setting torrid speed fractions and then he still hung on respectably). The blinkers came off and he was the last one standing to win the Belmont Stakes, because, let’s face it, no horse gets 1 ½ miles any more. One horse has to win but it doesn’t mean he got the distance. The same can be said for 1 ¼ miles.
In 2013, Palace Malice shined brighter than Matthew McConaughey’s smile. Other times he was no better than the horse carrying Scarecrow in Batman Begins (a horse saddled by a mediocre rider at best). Gate complacency also handicapped Palace Malice, but all that has stopped this year and his four-race win streak is the fruit bearing from that tree.
“The biggest difference this year is he hasn't made those types of mistakes,” said Todd Pletcher, Palace Malice’s trainer, whose horse will break from Post 5 as the even-money favorite. “We were worried about the Met Mile, drawing the one hole and carrying top weight, and he's just gotten more professional.”
This being his fifth start of the year sets him to run as many as eight or nine times this year, depending on health, of course.
“He really is [an iron horse],” Pletcher said. “He’s an uncomplicated horse. He’s hearty, he stays in the feed tub, you can train him however you want. I think he actually thrives on action. We ran him back pretty quickly in New Orleans after his first start of the year. It was back in three weeks and we were concerned about that, and he actually ran enormous that day. I think he likes the action.”
The best athletes are always the one who don’t overthink and that appears to apply to this horse as well (Clearly some horses do overthink. Or maybe they don’t overthink so much as they become distressed. Either way, Palace Malice just goes about his business with the acumen of Yasiel Puig.).
Another horse, who gets credit as being “heavily raced,” this despite just running one more race this year than Palace Malice, is Will Take Charge. Will Take Charge has raced five times already in 2014, none less than a Grade II. With the exception of one race, Will Take Charge was competitive in every effort. Will Take Charge drew Post 1 for the Whitney.
“I hate to have an upset stomach this early in the morning,” said his trainer D. Wayne Lukas. “Not good. I never really have much luck on the rail in any big race, not really in [a race] of this magnitude.”
Will Take Charge’s schedule is aggressive in the terms of the mileage he has logged. He started the year in Florida, then went to California, then Arkansas, then Kentucky. Next up is New York. He’s more well-traveled than Crash Davis, except Will Take Charge has succeeded and maintained his ability in the Show, so to speak.
Going back to last year’s Jim Dandy Stakes he’s finished worse than second just once, and that was an odd sixth-place effort in the Grade II Alysheba on Kentucky Oaks Day this year.
Why Lukas needs Tums for drawing Post 1 doesn’t exactly make sense. His fear probably has more to deal with getting pinned. Still, Will Take Charge naturally runs at the back of the pack. He can just fall out of the gate and save ground as soon as Tom Durkin says “And they’re off in the Whitney!”
“He’s gotten stronger and better,” Lukas said. “He’s quite a horse, and I think he's the best horse in the country right now. We have to go out and prove it; prove it a couple of different times, I’m sure, three, four more times to get where we want to get. Like I said in the press conference, I feel like he’s still the champion and I feel very good about the fact that we all get together on the same racetrack.”
Major Horse of the Year implications ride on this renewal of the Whitney and the first fight between Palace Malice and Will Take Charge in the final eighth of a mile could be a moment of the year.
