Ivar takes the blinkers off and turns the jets on in Shadwell Turf Mile

Ivar was a star last year in Argentina and he looked like one Saturday in Kentucky, winning the Grade 1, $750,000 Shadwell Turf Mile at Keeneland with a dazzling stretch run.

Ivar had two horses beat down the backstretch and around the far turn in the Shadwell, but launched himself into the fray at the quarter pole and descended on the leaders with alarming alacrity, hitting the front inside the furlong grounds and powering across the finish a dominant winner.

“I was all smiles turning for home,” said winning rider Joe Talamo.

Talamo had ridden Ivar in his two most recent starts, a front-running win in a Churchill Downs allowance race and a front-running third-place finish in the Tourist Mile last month at Kentucky Downs. Despite those superficially encouraging performances, trainer Paulo Lobo removed the blinkers he had added to Ivar’s race-day equipment for the Churchill win and got the result he desired Saturday. Ivar dropped toward the back of the Shadwell field and did his best running late in the game.

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“Down the backside, he got in such a good rhythm, so relaxed,” Talamo said. Lobo “took the blinkers off and it just was an incredible training job. I was all smiles turning for home.”

Ivar ($30.80) was bred in Brazil but was exported to Argentina for his racing career. He scored three smashing victories there last season, including two Group 1 wins by six lengths each, and was named champion 2-year-old (South American Thoroughbreds have a July 1 common birthday) before being sent to Lobo in the U.S. Ivar began working over the winter at the Thoroughbred Training Center outside Lexington, Ky., but had his North American debut delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning his 2020 season with a modest fifth-place finish in a May allowance race at Churchill Downs.

It was after that start Lobo experimented with blinkers, but going to the front probably isn’t what this colt wants to do.

“His races in Argentina, he always came from way off the pace,” said Lobo, a Brazilian native who won the 2002 Kentucky Oaks with Farda Amiga.

Halladay (who came up with inflammation in an ankle, according to trainer Todd Pletcher), and Spectacular Gem were scratched from the Shadwell, leaving a pace void somewhat surprisingly filled by Casa Creed, who went forward from post 1 to set splits of 23.44 and 47.39 while racing relatively pressure-free. Casa Creed held the lead around the turn and into the homestretch, and stayed on gamely enough that the first horse to pass him was Ivar, who flew to the front as Raging Bull, who had been last of nine with a quarter-mile to run, rolled home to finish second, beaten one length.

Without Parole, who got a forward trip stalking the pacesetter, finished third, three-quarters of a length behind his Chad Brown-trained stablemate Raging Bull and three-quarters in front of Casa Creed. Then came Flavius, Parlor, 2019 Shadwell winner Bowie’s Hero, and 2-1 favorite Analyze It, who had aim at Casa Creed in upper stretch but went badly flat. The overmatched Born Great finished a distant last.

Ivar was timed in 1:33.99, almost one second faster than Uni’s winning time two races earlier in the First Lady Stakes. Uni won the 2019 Breeders’ Cup Mile and figures to meet Ivar there on Nov. 7, since the Shadwell is a Breeders’ Cup Challenge race offering a fees-paid entry into the BC Mile. Four-year-old Ivar is by Agnes Gold out of May Be Now, by Smart Strike, and is Breeders’ Cup-eligible. Ivar’s dam, May Be Now, is a sister to Al’s Gal, who won the Grade 1 E.P. Taylor Stakes, and Ann of the Dance, a stakes winner in California.

- additional reporting by David Grening