Belmont Park: Flat Out earns 113 Beyer for Suburban Handicap win

ELMONT, N.Y. – Flat Out earned a 113 Beyer Speed Figure winning Saturday’s Grade 2 Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park, a number that puts the 5-year-old among the upper echelon of the older male division.

The 113 was the highest figure earned this year on dirt beyond one mile and is equal to the figure Tizway earned winning the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap at one mile here May 30.

The Suburban, which Flat Out won by 6 1/2 lengths, was by far the best race he has run in his career, one that has been interrupted by chronic quarter cracks and a cracked shoulder, which contrived to sideline him for 20 months from April 2009 until December 2010, when he won a second-level allowance race at Fair Grounds. Flat Out began the year with a runner-up finish to Awesome Gem in the Lone Star Park Handicap on May 30.

“That’s what we’ve been working toward to make the Breeders’ Cup this fall,” trainer Charles “Scooter” Dickey said Sunday afternoon after arriving back in Louisville. “We were hoping he’s good enough, and he’s starting to show us that maybe he is.”

Flat Out won Saturday’s Suburban just two weeks after finishing sixth, beaten only 2 3/4 lengths, in the Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs. Dickey said Flat Out came out of the Suburban so well that he “wouldn’t be afraid to run him back” on relatively short notice again.

Dickey said the races he would consider for Flat Out would be the Grade 1 Whitney at Saratoga on Aug. 6, the Philip Iselin at Monmouth Park on Aug. 20, and the Woodward at Saratoga on Sept. 3. One race he will most definitely point to is the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park on Oct. 1.

“He really liked that track yesterday,” Dickey said.

Dickey said that Flat Out vanned to Monmouth Park on Sunday morning. Dickey flew back to Kentucky to get his remaining five horses ready to ship from Churchill to Monmouth, where his stable will be based this summer.