Maximum Security, Spun to Run complete serious training for Cigar Mile
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Maximum Security and Spun to Run, the two likely favorites for what is shaping up to be a 10-horse field for Saturday’s Grade 1, $750,000 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct, both put in their final serious training sessions over the weekend.
www.drf.com/race-results/tracks/AQU/country/USA/date/12-07-2019
On Sunday at Belmont Park, Maximum Security galloped a mile in 1:57.01, going once around the one-mile training track beginning at the seven-furlong pole. He went his final three furlongs in 42.21 seconds and will be credited with a three-furlong workout as such.
“He’s fit, we’re just maintaining him,” trainer Jason Servis said after speaking with his assistant Henry Argueta, who has been overseeing Maximum Security’s preparations at Belmont.
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Maximum Security, who was disqualified from first in the Kentucky Derby, is seeking his third Grade 1 victory in the Cigar Mile. If able to add the Cigar to Grade 1 tallies in the Florida Derby and Haskell as well as a win in the Grade 3 Bold Ruler Handicap, he should thrust himself back into contention for an Eclipse Award as champion 3-year-old male.
Maximum Security will be the starting highweight at 122 pounds for the Cigar Mile, run under handicap conditions. McKinzie was assigned 124 pounds but is not coming for the race.
Spun to Run, the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner, and Whitmore, another Grade 1 winner pointing to the Cigar, were both assigned 120 pounds. Other likely starters and their weight assignments include Pat On the Back (118), Bal Harbour (117), Tale of Silence (117), True Timber (116), Forewarned (115), Network Effect (115), and Looking at Bikinis (113).
On Saturday at Parx Racing, Spun to Run worked five furlongs in 59.98, his second bullet work since winning the BC Dirt Mile. Trainer Juan Carlos Guerrero said Spun to Run appears to be getting aggressive as the Cigar Mile approaches.
“He worked pretty quick,” Guerrero said. “I expected to go easy, I wanted him to go easy, but the exercise rider says he’s getting tougher and tougher. I don’t know when he’s going to say, ‘That’s enough for me.’ Right now, I’m taking it by race by race, but every time he comes back he comes back with no problem like he wants to do more and more.”
