Up With the Birds to Arlington Million

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Up With the Birds, among the best horses based in Canada, is a likely runner in the Arlington Million, trainer Malcolm Pierce confirmed Tuesday.

“That’s the direction we’re leaning with him,” said Pierce. “He’ll have one more breeze this Friday, and then we’ll look at pre-entering him. The horse ran a pretty strong race here in his last start. We thought, ‘Let’s give him a try.’ ”

Up With the Birds won July 19 for the first time in three starts this year when he scored a decisive victory in the Grade 2 Nijinsky Stakes, beating Dynamic Sky by four lengths over 1 1/8 miles on turf. That gave the 4-year-old Sam-Son Farm homebred seven wins from 12 career starts and showed the colt had come all the way back to his good 2013 form which landed the Grade 1 Jamaica at Belmont last fall, and, with better luck, would have won the $1 million Queen’s Plate.

Jockey Eurico Da Silva has a return call on Up With the Birds, who will van to Chicago right on top of the race, arriving the Friday morning before his Saturday start, Pierce said.

“We’ll hope for good weather,” said Pierce. “He doesn’t want a lot of give to the ground.”