Drain the Clock has Allen Jerkens Stakes circled on calendar

ELMONT, N.Y. – Trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. predicted before Saturday’s Grade 1 Woody Stephens at Belmont Park that his top 3-year-old sprinter Drain the Clock was sitting on his best race yet. What he wasn’t sure of was whether that would still be good enough to defeat a premier field that included the odds-on favorite Jackie’s Warrior.

In the end, Joseph’s prediction not only came true, but Drain the Clock did indeed prove good enough to win the seven-furlong Woody Stephens, narrowly prevailing after a near race-long duel with Jackie’s Warrior. The numbers also validate Joseph’s theory, with Drain the Clock receiving a 97 Beyer Speed Figure, nine points higher than the 86 he earned for winning the Grade 3 Bay Shore and finishing second going a mile and one-sixteenth in the Fountain of Youth in his two previous starts.

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On Monday, Joseph said Drain the Clock came out of his hard-fought effort in good shape. His biggest decision now is whether to keep Drain the Clock in New York or send him back to his home base at Gulfstream Park to prepare for his next primary goal, the Grade 1 Allen Jerkens at Saratoga on Aug. 28.

“My best groom rubs both Drain the Clock and Mischevious Alex, and he’s back in Florida, so there is some thought to send them both home for a while, to get them back in their own environment so they can be with him,” said Joseph. “Although in all likelihood, I’ll probably just keep them up here at Belmont with the others for a few weeks then ship them all to Saratoga.”

Joseph said the plan he, Drain the Clock’s owners, and jockey Jose Ortiz settled on for the Woody Stephens worked out perfectly.

“We hoped to out-break Jackie’s Warrior, let him go if he wanted, and chase him from outside,” said Joseph. “The fact [Jackie’s Warrior] didn’t break sharply made it much easier. We wound up getting as good of a trip as possible. I knew in all his previous one-turn races, Drain the Clock had won with something in reserve, so I just felt he had more to give. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was whether it would be enough to beat a horse like Jackie’s Warrior.”

Joseph said all he is concentrating on with Drain the Clock is the Allen Jerkens, and that a race like the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, where he’d have to take on older horses, is really not something under consideration for the time being.

“The Allen Jerkens has always been the plan,” he said. “We’ll think about the Breeders’ Cup and all that later on. The same with stretching him out further than seven furlongs. Can he win a two-turn race somewhere down the line? Probably. We’ll just make those decisions as we go along.”

As for Mischevious Alex, the Breeders’ Cup Sprint is definitely the major focus following his third-place finish, beaten 1 3/4 lengths by Silver State, in Saturday’s Met Mile.

“I thought he could be vulnerable at a mile, but we had to try it,” said Joseph. “We had to keep Knicks Go honest, to ride him a little differently than we might normally have to win the race, and that’s probably the worst thing to do with a horse that has some distance limitations. And yet he was still right there until about 100 yards out. He ran a very creditable race, it’s just a mile is stretching him out a bit against Grade 1 horses.”

Joseph said that Mischevious Alex, who won the seven-furlong Grade 1 Carter at Aqueduct with a whopping 109 Beyer Figure in his previous start, will go back to doing what he does best this summer at Saratoga, with goals including the Grade 1 Alfred Vanderbilt going six furlongs on July 31 and Forego at seven-eighths on Aug. 28.

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“We feel Mischevious Alex is a legitimate contender to win the Breeders’ Cup Sprint,” said Joseph. “The question now is whether we’ll run in both or just one of the Grade 1 sprints this summer at Saratoga.”

Joseph, who is running away with the Gulfstream spring-summer training title, has 14 horses stabled at Belmont Park. He plans to bump that number up to 30 when he ships to Saratoga sometime around the first week in July. He also has 20 horses bedded down at Monmouth Park with more heading in that direction as the summer progresses.