Meadowlands: World's best pacers compete in Sam McKee Memorial

Just four weeks after he equaled the fastest mile of all time, Lather Up will take on reigning Horse of the Year McWicked and a field of 10 other top-class pacers in the Sam McKee Memorial.

The $230,200 McKee (race 7) is one of the most anticipated contests on the star-studded Hambletonian undercard on Saturday at The Meadowlands, which kicks off at noon. The horses will cover the added distance of 1 1/8 miles just before the first elimination of America’s Trotting Classic at around 2:25 p.m.

McWicked, the 7-2 second choice on the morning line, enters this event following a win over rival This Is The Plan in the Joe Gerrity Memorial at Saratoga.

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This Is The Plan took the Ben Franklin on June 29 and has already earned just shy of $500,000 this season. Lather Up, the 3-1 favorite, scored in the William Haughton Memorial - which was also contested at the distance of 1 1/8 miles - last time out, and previously the Graduate, in which he illuminated the teletimer in 1:46 (equaling Always B Miki’s world record) at a flat mile.

Those three, along with defending McKee champion Western Joe, 2017 Little Brown Jug victor Filibuster Hanover, and a group of other stakes winners will make for a highly-competitive spectacle.

“There are 12 of them in there and they’re all capable of winning,” said Montrell Teague, the driver of Lather Up, who will start from post 9. “McWicked can come back to form to where he was when he was Horse of the Year anytime in the season. So that’s definitely on our radar. All of them deserve to be in that race. There are no slouches and whoever you don’t look at in the race, that’ll be the winner.”

Casie Coleman, the trainer of McWicked, says her 8-year-old stallion is ready to go.

“He’s literally just starting to come back around and I couldn’t have been any happier with him when he raced at Saratoga last week,” said Coleman, who has called on Brian Sears to drive the son of McArdle from post 2. “He trained [Tuesday morning] and he trained awesome. He seemed sharp, sound, healthy. Everything seems good so we think - we hope - he’s looking good.”

McWicked, who has earned upwards of $4.2 million, has performed below the lofty expectations placed on him after being named Horse of the Year in both the United States and Canada in 2018. He has gone behind the starting gate just six times this season and won twice, with an injury sidelining him early in the campaign.

“After he won his first start at Mohawk, he had some issues with a foot,” said Coleman. “He’s had foot issues his entire life. I had to miss a couple of weeks because he was sore and then the Preferred at Mohawk didn’t fill for two weeks in a row, and when he went into the [Mohawk] Gold Cup he was a month without a race. So we were between a rock and a hard place and he was simply short and not in racing shape yet.”

Lather Up has earned over $400,000 in 2019 and visited the winner’s circle six times from nine outings. The 4-year-old son of I’m Gorgeous has already triumphed twice at 1 1/8 miles, and Teague believes the distance is to his advantage.

“I think it suits him a little better because he doesn’t really seem like he gets tired going a mile or a mile and an eighth, like at the Meadowlands about two weeks ago,” Teague said. “He definitely has huge lungs and it definitely suited him [in the Haughton], so I hope it does the same thing this time.”

All eyes in the harness world are understandably on the 4-year-old Clyde Francis trainee after his record performance in the Graduate final. He has been made the early lukewarm favorite, and has generated hype among fans of the sport.

“It’s definitely a lot more pressure [having the favorite],” said Teague. “Everybody’s looking at you instead of being a longshot where nobody’s giving you any attention. But I’d definitely rather have the pressure than not having any attention and being a 30-1 shot instead of a 5-2 shot.”

This Is The Plan’s only 2019 win came in the Franklin on June 29, but he has already amassed almost $500,000 in earnings this year. He has finished second five times this season, and his trainer Ron Burke says he needs to develop a killer instinct to find victory lane.

“If they go (1):46, he’ll go (1):46. The problem is, if they go (1):49, sometimes he’ll go (1):49, too,” said Burke. “He sticks to the level of the other horses. He’s a very talented horse that maybe can just develop a little bit more of a killer attitude to take him to the next level. Right now, he’s a very good horse. If he wants to be a great horse, he has to learn to win because he has the speed to put himself into any position he wants to be, but it’s just learning to finish off the thing.”

This Is The Plan starts from post 4 with regular driver Yannick Gingras in the bike.

This race was previously known as the U.S. Pacing Championship, but has since been renamed in honor of late Communicators Hall of Famer and longtime Meadowlands announcer and broadcaster Sam McKee, who passed away unexpectedly in 2017.

Nicholas Barnsdale, a rising Sophomore at Humber College, is writing as part of the Clyde Hirt Journalism Workshop