Get Smokin leads the way in Seek Again victory
ELMONT, N.Y. - Label it a cliché if you want, but that saying about how pace makes the race, well, it’s actually quite true.
Get Smokin likes to race up front. When he goes too fast and is engaged, as he was in last month’s Grade 1 Maker’s Mark Mile at Keeneland, it typically doesn’t work out. He finished eighth.
When Get Smokin is on the lead, uncontested through modest fractions, it does work out. Such was the case in Saturday’s $100,000 Seek Again Stakes at Belmont Park when Get Smokin got to the front, was able to maintain a one-length advantage through a quarter in 24.25 seconds and a half-mile in 48.61 and had plenty left with which to finish, turning back Flavius to win by three-quarters of a length. Flavius, the 9-5 favorite, held second by a nose over 24-1 shot Tell Your Daddy.
Delaware was fourth, followed by Decorated Invader, Tiberius Mercurius, Olympic Runner, and Epic Dreamer.
Get Smokin, a 4-year-old gelding by Get Stormy, won for the fourth time in 14 starts. Three of his four victories, including a front-running score in last October’s Grade 2 Hill Prince, have come at Belmont Park.
In the Maker’s Mark Mile, Get Smokin hooked up with Somelikeithotbrown through a half-mile in 45.65 seconds. On Saturday, under Junior Alvarado, he was able to go three seconds slower for the opening half-mile, uncontested.
“When they’re loping along like that and they’re not using themselves too much you always feel good about that,” winning trainer Tom Bush said. “I knew they’d all be trying to lay a little closer too, since I was the only speed really, and they did, but they just couldn’t get by him.”
Indeed, Flavius, whose success has come from off the pace, was kept in second throughout by Javier Castellano. Though he tried him at the quarter pole, Get Smokin repelled the challenge.
Get Smokin ran his final quarter in 22.18 seconds and completed the mile in 1:33.96. He returned $10.80 as the third choice.
“I could feel he still was waiting for me to ask him for run,” Alvarado said. “I was going to be in disbelief if somebody was going to go by me the way he was trying at the end.”
Bush said Get Smokin will be pointed to the Grade 3, $250,000 Poker Stakes here June 20.