Barbadian Runner noses out Pay Billy to win Miracle Wood
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A month after Barbadian Runner won the Spectacular Bid Stakes by a head, the 3-year-old Maryland-bred captured Saturday’s $100,000 Miracle Wood Stakes by an even slimmer margin, outlasting Pay Billy by a nose in the mile-long race at Laurel Park.
After taking an inside trip about two lengths behind a slow pace, jockey Forest Boyce was able to move Barbadian Runner toward the outside turning for home. Barbadian Runner hooked up with Pay Billy inside the eighth pole and outfinished him to get the narrow victory.
It was 3 3/4 lengths back to favored Sacred Thunder in third. Crab Daddy, second to Barbadian Runner in the Spectacular Bid, finished fourth, while All the Hardways was fifth. Studlydoright scratched to run in the John Battaglia Memorial at Turfway Park.
The early fractions of 24.82 seconds for the quarter and 48.91 for the half-mile were concerning to Henry Walters, the trainer of Barbadian Runner.
“I was a little worried early on that the pace was too slow for him,” Walters said in a post-race interview broadcast on the Laurel simulcast feed. “Forest kept him on the rail, . . . but when they turned for home, she had him where he belonged.”
Walters was confident his horse would prevail in the stretch battle, saying, “He’s game. He loves to run head and head with a horse."
A Maryland-bred son of Barbados owned by AJ Will Win Stables, Barbadian Runner covered the mile in 1:38.39 and returned $10.20 as the fourth choice in the field of five.
Barbardian Runner has made 10 starts since June 30, and Walters said his plan is to send Barbadian Runner to the farm for three or four weeks before deciding where he may run next. That decision would rule him out of the Private Terms Stakes, a one-turn mile race at Laurel on March 22.
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