Budding marathon rivalry on display in Flat Out Stakes

As a $2 million yearling, Marconi probably will never end up on the positive side of the ledger for owners Bridlewood Farm and the Coolmore group. But he’s grinding away at making a dent in that nut – just as he grinds away on the racetrack with a running style that suggests the longer, the better.

Marconi just kept coming to win the 1 3/16-mile Skip Away at Gulfstream Park a month ago for his first stakes victory, and he gets another three-sixteenths of a mile to work with Friday in the 1 3/8-mile Flat Out at Belmont Park. Marconi, trained by Todd Pletcher, is among a field of nine older horses in the $100,000 Flat Out, which may end up as a prep for some of these to the Grade 2 Brooklyn at 1 1/2 miles on the June 8 Belmont Stakes card.

Marconi won a 1 1/8-mile maiden race at the end of his 2-year-old season in 2017 and was promptly put on the Kentucky Derby trail. But he never showed the turn of foot required to compete with the best in his class, and he ended up third in the Withers at Aqueduct, fifth in the Fountain of Youth at Gulfstream, and eighth in the Blue Grass at Keeneland last April. Off for 10 months, Marconi returned with a fourth-place finish in a Gulfstream allowance race in February at the inadequate distance of a mile around one turn. That set up Marconi for the Skip Away – and possibly for a profitable season as a dirt marathoner.

Marconi’s main rival in the Flat Out is Rocketry, who knows a little something about running in dirt marathons. After a series of races on turf, Rocketry set off on a new career path with a victory in the 1 5/8-mile Temperence Hill on the main track at Belmont Park last September. He returned on Breeders’ Cup weekend to win the Grade 2 Marathon at Churchill Downs, finishing the 1 3/4-mile race as if eager to run another mile or two.

Rocketry spun his wheels in the Skip Away, his first start at 5, and finished fifth, six lengths back of Marconi. With that race behind him, the longer distance, and a return to Belmont Park, Rocketry should put in a better effort in the Flat Out.

Rajiv Maragh rides Rocketry on Friday, and Jose Lezcano will be aboard Marconi.

Roaming Union, Tour de Force, and perhaps Twisted Tom should set a decent pace for Marconi and Rocketry. Completing the field are Forewarned, G Zap, Monongahela, and Royal Albert Hall.