Honor Code confirmed for Gulfstream Park Handicap

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Shug McGaughey is hoping 2015 will be the breakout year for his talented but injury-plagued Honor Code, who launches his season against Grade 1 winners Private Zone and Wicked Strong in Saturday’s Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Handicap.

Honor Code will be making only his sixth start in the one-mile Gulfstream Park Handicap. He moved toward the top of his division at 2 after being narrowly defeated in the Grade 1 Champagne and winning the Grade 2 Remsen. He finished a well-beaten second behind Social Inclusion in his 3-year-old debut, then had his Kentucky Derby dreams shattered by a suspensory tear sustained during a workout in preparation for the Wood Memorial, a race won by Wicked Strong.

Honor Code finally returned to the races at Aqueduct in late November, unleashing an eye-catching run to win a second-level allowance race going 6 1/2 furlongs over a speed-favoring racetrack. The performance left his legion of fans anxiously awaiting his next start, and perhaps frustrated some by the patient McGaughey, who was looking at the bigger picture while plotting Honor Code’s 2015 campaign.

“I actually wanted to give him a little more time, but he told us he wanted to run, so we sort of hammered down on him to have him ready for this race,” McGaughey said on Tuesday. “He breezed yesterday – he breezed excellent – everything’s a go. We might look at the Carter or Westchester Mile next, but this race isn’t a prep for anything – we’re in there to win. I’m going to stretch him out around two turns again at some point this season, and we’re hopeful he’ll be the kind of horse who can win the big handicaps, like the Suburban and Whitney, later in the year.”

McGaughey is also hoping he’ll be luckier with Honor Code on Saturday than he was here last Saturday, when his automobile fell victim to a storm that dumped a reported eight inches of rain over the local area.

“I had to come back to the barn to attend to a horse we had scratched and were trying to load on a van to go back to Payson Park,” said McGaughey. “And when I tried to drive my car out of the stable area, the water was so deep it flooded the engine, stalled, and had to be towed to the shop, where they’re still not sure if it can be fixed.”

McGaughey is stabled in one of the sections of the barn area that was hardest hit by the storm.

“Grooms were walking horses up to the races in front of my barn through three feet of water,” said McGaughey. “Luckily, none of our stalls were actually flooded, but it was inexcusable for this to happen again. I was here when we had a similar situation several years ago. Everybody should thank Bill Badgett for being on the ball Sunday morning to help get everything straightened out back here the way he did.”

McGaughey also said he was planning to “step things up a bit” with his other top 3-year-old prospect from 2014, Top Billing, who finished fourth as the favorite under allowance conditions here last month while making his first start since his third-place finish in the 2014 Fountain of Youth.

“He needed the race,” said McGaughey. “I’ll have to do more with him and then find another allowance race around two turns.”