Flightline gets year's-best 118 Beyer for Runhappy Malibu victory

ARCADIA, Calif. – As good as Flightline looked in person and on video in the Grade 1 Runhappy Malibu Stakes on Sunday at Santa Anita, he did even better on paper.

Flightline earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 118 for the Malibu, the best figure assigned to any horse this year, eclipsing the 114 that Flightline and Baby Yoda had earned in races in September in allowance sprints at Del Mar and Saratoga, respectively.

Flightline now stands alone for 2021. He has run three times, and has earned figures of 105, 114, and now 118 while winning a Grade 1 race, all in three starts.

Formal Gold, in 1996, debuted with a 112 and won three straight allowance races before getting a 113 when losing his stakes debut in his fifth career start, in the Grade 3 Pennsylvania Derby.

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“For the third start of his career, this is pretty remarkable,” Andy Beyer, who created his eponymous figures, said of Flightline on Monday.

Flightline’s 118 is the highest figure since the 121 earned by Shancelot in the 2019 Amsterdam at Saratoga. Shancelot was trained by the now-convicted Jorge Navarro.

The most recent high figure by a horse not trained by Navarro was the 120 earned by Gun Runner in the 2018 Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream in the final start of his career.

The highest figure earned around one turn prior to Flightline’s Malibu was the 123 assigned Frosted for his victory in the 2016 Metropolitan Handicap, a one-turn mile at Belmont Park.

Again excluding Shancelot, the 118 for Flightline is the best pure sprint number in more than a decade, since the 120 given to Big Drama for winning the Grade 3 Mr. Prospector at Gulfstream in January 2011, his first start after winning the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs.

Flightline, a colt by Tapit trained by John Sadler, has won his three races by a combined 37 1/2 lengths. He won the Malibu by 11 1/2 lengths in a final time of 1:21.37 for seven furlongs over a track that was rated fast but played a bit dull most of the day following recent rainstorms. Baby Yoda was second in the Malibu.