Bargain-priced Trikari can outrun his odds in Maker's Mark Mile; $211,733 pick six carryover
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Trikari couldn’t quite handle top-level older horses in late September of his 3-year-old season. His connections will find out Friday at Keeneland if he can do so as an older horse himself when Trikari makes his 4-year-old debut in the Grade 1, $650,000 Maker’s Mark Mile.
Trikari faces eight rivals in the Maker’s Mark, among them two of the best older middle-distance turf horses in training, Carl Spackler and Integration. The Maker's Mark Mile is part of a $1 pick six sequence on Friday that begins with a carryover of $211,733.
Carl Spackler won back-to-back Grade 1s last year, the second of them the Coolmore Turf Mile over the Keeneland course. He makes his first start since November and will be favored under Flavien Prat.
Integration, for all his accomplishments, has failed to win at the Grade 1 level in five starts. He came closest in his most recent race, the Pegasus World Cup Turf on Jan. 25 at Gulfstream, where Spirit of St Louis beat him by a neck.
Chad Brown trains Spirit of St Louis and sends Carl Spackler, another 5-year-old horse, out for his first start since a sixth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Mile.
The morning line lists Trikari at 8-1, a generous price on a horse held in high regard by Graham Motion, who has trained countless graded stakes-class turf horses. Motion trained Trikari’s dam, Dynamic Holiday, a Grade 3 winner and sister to two graded stakes and two other stakes winners. Yet Dynamic Holiday slipped through the cracks of the bloodstock market: In foal to Oscar Performance, she sold for $14,000.
The foal she produced, who’d become Trikari, was purchased at a January 2022 yearling auction for $9,000. At another yearling sale in April, Bob Felt bought him for $27,500 for his clients, Jerry and Joan Amerman, who’d campaigned Oscar Performance.
That was a steal. Trikari’s four-win 2024 campaign included victories in the $250,000 Rushaway, the Grade 2 American Turf, the Grade 2 Secretariat over one mile, and the Grade 1 Belmont Derby Invitational at 1 3/16 miles. Trikari has earned more than $1.3 million – and looks the part.
“He’s gorgeous,” Motion said.
By the time Trikari shipped cross-country to California for the Grade 2 City of Hope Mile, he’d made seven starts in his form cycle and was coming off two peak performances. Getting only four pounds from America’s leading turf horse, Johannes, Trikari finished a respectable fourth, beaten 1 1/2 lengths. A month later, he came back with a flat sixth in the Bryan Station at Keeneland.
“Last summer, I did what I swore I wouldn’t do and started thinking Breeders’ Cup. And after California, I ran him one too many times at Keeneland,” Motion said.
Trikari, the mount Friday of John Velazquez, changed over the winter. Motion isn’t sure why.
“He was pretty wound up last year, aggressive in his works. He’s so much more relaxed. I even put Johnny on him one morning to see if he was doing well,” Motion said.
Trikari will need to be doing more than well to beat an in-form Carl Spackler, and publicly accessible video of a couple dirt workouts at Payson Park suggests Carl Spackler returns from a layoff ready to roll.
Carl Spackler looked like the best 3-year-old grass horse of 2023. Then, late that summer, he colicked severely enough to require surgery. His 2024 campaign began tepidly before he won the Fourstardave by more than three lengths and the Turf Mile at Keeneland by one length. More Than Looks finished second in both races, then won the Breeders’ Cup Mile.
Integration probably prefers a longer race than one mile. His lone start at the distance was in the 2024 Maker’s Mark Mile, where Integration finished third, beaten more than four lengths by star miler Master of The Seas while racing over softer going than he prefers.
Trainer Shug McGaughey will closely monitor a forecast that calls for a chance of rain Thursday and Friday.
“We’re running unless the weather’s bad,” McGaughey said. “His works this winter at Payson have been really, really good. He’s probably a lot more consistent than when he was 3 and 4.”
The rest of the field includes fringe players and no-hopers.
Funtastic Again’s strong second behind divisional leader Johannes last May in the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile at Santa Anita stands as a stark outlier among his 10 starts.
Northern Invader’s connections passed on a high-end allowance race this past Tuesday at Keeneland to try the Maker’s Mark, but Carl Spackler beat Northern Invader by more than four lengths last summer, and Brown took him down in the Tampa Bay Stakes this winter with a lesser horse, Running Bee.
Silent Heart, campaigned as a sprinter for much of his career, switched to two-turn middle distances to good effect this winter. But will a pair of close third-place finishes in muddled Grade 3s suffice to contend Friday?
Santorini and Seminole Chief bring a measure of early pace to the race, but little more than that, while Grand Aspen does not appear to belong in a race at this level.
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