Drain the Clock cruises in Bay Shore Stakes

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Back to doing what he does best, Drain the Clock was too good for his four rivals in Saturday’s Grade 3, $200,000 Bay Shore Stakes, scoring a handy 1 3/4-length victory in the seven-furlong race for 3-year-olds at Aqueduct.

Whiskey Double, last at the head of the lane, rallied to be second, 5 3/4 lengths ahead of Too Boss. Beren and Garoppolo completed the order of finish.

The win was the fifth from seven starts for Drain the Clock, but he is 5 for 5 in races run around one turn. He added the Bay Shore to victories in the Grade 3 Swale Stakes and the listed Limehouse earlier this winter at Gulfstream Park.

Drain the Clock was coming off a second-place finish behind Greatest Honour in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth going 1 1/16 miles around two turns.

The only anxious moment Saturday for jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. was right before the gates opened when Drain the Clock was moving around a little bit.

“He can be moving and all that with the head, he just wants to break out of there,” said Ortiz, who was riding Drain the Clock for the first time.

Drain the Clock broke a half-step slow “but he put himself right away into the race and just took me to the lead,” Ortiz said.

Drain the Clock made the front through a quarter in 23.68 seconds and had Beren, who stumbled badly at the break, within a half-length of him through a half-mile in 47.97. But when Ortiz asked Drain the Clock to run at the top of the lane “he just rebroke,” Ortiz said. “He was running hard to the wire. I just slow him down the last couple of jumps.”

Drain the Clock, a son of Maclean’s Music owned by Slam Dunk Racing, Madaket Stable, Wonder Stables, and Michael Nentwig and trained by Saffie Joseph Jr., covered the seven furlongs 1:25.97 and returned $2.70 as the 1-5 favorite. Drain the Clock was given an 86 Beyer Speed Figure.

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Joseph, who watched the race from Florida, said Drain the Clock has acted up in the gate in some of his previous races. The horse stood perfectly in a gate-schooling session on Thursday morning at Belmont Park.

“It’s something we have to keep working on and hopefully he’ll eventually be able to behave the way he does in the morning,” Joseph said. “In the race, he’s professional and he won the way we hoped he would win.”

Joseph, who does plan to keep horses in New York this spring, said Drain the Clock would most likely return to Florida to train and then return to New York for races like the Woody Stephens on June 5 at Belmont Park and the H. Allen Jerkens on Aug. 28 at Saratoga.