Palace Malice comes into his own as 4-year-old

ELMONT, N.Y. – The frustrations trainer Todd Pletcher experienced with Palace Malice in the spring of 2013 are a distant memory now as the horse has developed into a professional runner who just may be the best older male in training.

Palace Malice made it three straight wins to begin his 4-year-old campaign with an easy-as-he-pleased 9 3/4-length victory over three rivals in Sunday’s Grade 3 Westchester Stakes at Belmont. The performance should set him up perfectly for the $1.25 million Metropolitan Handicap, which will be run on the June 7 Belmont Stakes card. Last year, Palace Malice won the Belmont Stakes after losses in the Louisiana Derby and Blue Grass Stakes and a 12th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, a race in which he was equipped with blinkers for the first and only time.

“Everything about the horse kind of told us he’d get better as he got older,” Pletcher said Monday. “I think part of that is just normal maturation, but he’s certainly become very professional. We always knew he had talent. We were frustrated a few times with the trips he got.”

Only four horses have won the Belmont Stakes and come back the next year to win the Met Mile – The Finn (1915-16), Native Dancer (1953-54), High Gun (1954-55), and Gallant Man (1957-58). Grey Lag won the 1921 Belmont and the 1923 Met Mile. Bowling Brook (1898), Sword Dancer (1959), Arts and Letters (1969), and Conquistador Cielo (1982) won both races the same year.

Pletcher said that for Palace Malice to be in a position to win both races “speaks to his versatility and quality.”

“He seems to be at a point in his career where you can do whatever you want with him in terms of tractability, distance,” Pletcher said. “Like a lot of cases, sometimes good horses can just be good at any distance. He seems to be an example of that.”

On Sunday, Palace Malice ran a mile in 1:35.53 over a drying-out track and was assigned a 111 Beyer Speed Figure. Pletcher said the race seemed “pretty easy on him.”

“Didn’t seem too stressed after the race, and looked good this morning,” Pletcher said. “So I think he handled it all very well.”

Among those being mentioned for the Met Mile are last year’s winner, Sahara Sky, as well as Central Banker and Normandy Invasion.