Honor Code one work closer to comeback

ELMONT, N.Y. – While most of the high-profile horses are preparing for the Breeders’ Cup and the end of their racing seasons, one big-name horse is getting closer to restarting his career.

Honor Code, last year’s Grade 2 Remsen Stakes winner who has been away from the races since March, worked four furlongs in 50.26 seconds Monday morning over Belmont Park’s main track. It was his fourth work since resuming training, but first at a racetrack. He had been based at the Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland.

At one point trainer Shug McGaughey was thinking of bringing him back in the Grade 3 Discovery Handicap at Aqueduct on Nov. 1, but that race is no longer in the plans.

“If it was a mile that would be okay,” McGaughey said. “I don’t want to run him a mile and an eighth first time out of the box.”
McGaughey said he was quite pleased with the way Honor Code breezed on Monday and said he would breeze him again over the weekend “and then might start looking for a spot.”

Honor Code, who finished a neck behind Havana in the Grade 1 Champagne before winning the Remsen, suffered a tear in a hind suspensory after he finished second to Social Inclusion in an allowance race at Gulfstream Park in his 3-year-old debut.

Monday’s work was Honor Code’s first since Oct. 3.

“He did miss one work,” McGaughey said. “He had a hock blow up on him and missed a few days.”

Top Billing, McGaughey’s other top 3-year-old from earlier this year, is jogging and galloping at Fair Hill and could start breezing in two or three weeks, McGaughey said.