Grade 1 winner Complexity returns off layoff in allowance

ELMONT, N.Y. – The $100,000 Mount Vernon Stakes is technically the feature on Thursday’s nine-race card at Belmont Park, but a multi-conditioned allowance race for older males on dirt, featuring of bevy of stakes winners, may be the more interesting race on the program.

The one-mile race drew four graded stakes winners, including Complexity, winner of the Grade 1 Champagne at 2, and Nicodemus, the Grade 3 Westchester winner of 2019. Discreet Lover, upset winner of the 2018 Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup, is trying to reverse some awful form, while Win Win Win, a stakes winner on both dirt and turf, returns to the dirt.

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Complexity, trained by Chad Brown, won the Grade 1 Champagne by three lengths over Code of Honor in October 2018. Since then, he has gone just 1 for 4 and has not started since finishing fourth in the Grade 1 Malibu on Dec. 28 at Santa Anita.

“He’s training well,” Brown said. “Coming back at a mile is a strong test, but got to get him started somewhere.”

Brown said Complexity “got a beautiful trip” in the Malibu. “He just didn’t fire.”

Complexity will break from post 9 under Jose Ortiz.

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Trainer Linda Rice had been shopping for a spot for Nicodemus for a while. She felt the Westchester on June 6 was too tough, so she tried him on the turf in the First Defence Stakes on June 7 and he finished last. He is back on dirt and back on the track and at the distance at which he won the Westchester 14 months ago. John Velazquez, who hasn’t ridden a horse for Rice since October 2018, has the call Thursday.

Neither of trainer Todd Pletcher’s entrants has won a stakes, but both are coming off a solid performance. Sniper Shot won a second-level allowance in the slop by 6 3/4 lengths on May 17 at Gulfstream. Pletcher’s other entrant, Spinoff, was beaten a neck by Just Whistle in the Sunday Silence Stakes at Gulfstream the same day.

Win Win Win did not run well in the First Defence on turf, but that was his first start in 11 months. The last time he ran one turn on dirt, he won the Pasco Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs in January 2019, earning a career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 99.