Diehard globetrotter Nakatomi ships in for stakes-caliber sprint
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The 7-year-old gelding Nakatomi five summers ago raced at Royal Ascot. He has started in three Breeders’ Cup Sprints and been three times to the Dubai Golden Shaheen in the United Arab Emirates.
The 8-year-old gelding Here Mi Song was born in Kentucky and his 38 races have come at the Commonwealth’s four tracks: Turfway, Keeneland, Churchill, and Ellis. Ellis is home, and Here Mi Song has stabled there since early May. The worldly Nakatomi comes into his house for the featured eighth race Friday.
Quite a feature it is, too, a 6 1/2-furlong dirt race open to third-level allowance horses; non-winners this year of a race other than a maiden, claiming, or first-level allowance; and $80,000 claimers, of which there are none. The 10-horse field came up stakes-quality. Here Mi Song has the far outside post, with Nakatomi drawn immediately inside him.
Not that this is a two-horse race.
Longshot Pinfire won his only Ellis start and still has a far better race in him than either of his two outings this year. Taylor’s Version needs to make the lead but is a dangerous front-runner if he does.
Echo Again made a sharp mid-turn move before coming home evenly but decently for fourth in the Jeff Hall Memorial last month at Ellis. Dreaminblue – who has only won at Oaklawn Park – finished second in the same race, closing late, as is his wont, after having to wait for running room between the three-eighths and quarter poles.
Four-year-old Autodrive still has upside five races into his career. He won his first three, and fourth time out finished third at Fair Grounds behind Built, who won the Grade 2 Vanderbilt on July 25, and Maximum Bourbon, who missed by a nose the same day in the Grade 1 Bing Crosby.
Autodrive ran just okay in an April 26 turf experiment. He hasn’t raced since but has remained on a work pattern during his absence.
Nakatomi makes his Ellis debut in his first start since a flat fifth March 28 in the Golden Shaheen. At his 5-2 morning-line odds, he feels like a horse to play against. At 5-1, Here Mi Song would feel like a gamble.
Owner Nathan Hayden and trainer Billy Stinson considered retiring Here Mi Song over the winter, Stinson said. Here Mi Song had earned more than a million bucks, quite the haul for a horse produced by a low-level claiming mare that Hayden was gifted as a broodmare prospect.
Turned out at Hayden’s farm in Corydon, Ky., Here Mi Song showed no real interest in full-time pasture life. Back to training in April, he made his belated 2026 debut in the Jeff Hall, showed inside speed, and had to make an early move to the lead to avoid getting shuffled back. Despite failing to change leads until he’d passed the sixteenth pole, Here Mi Song held well for third.
“Usually takes him a race or two to get going,” Stinson said. “He’s a big, old, heavy horse and doesn’t take anything serious. He’s a clown. He needed that race, that’s for sure.”
Here Mi Song won basically this same allowance race a year ago after another third in the Jeff Hall. He’s well drawn Friday for his preferred stalk-and-pounce trip.
“Both of us were going to retire, actually, but we both got bored,” Stinson said.
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