Passing Out poised to outrun odds in Pebbles Stakes

ELMONT, N.Y. – Passing Out has the lowest last-race Beyer Speed Figure of any of the seven 3-year-old fillies slated to contest Saturday’s $200,000 Pebbles Stakes, a one-mile turf stakes at Belmont Park. But sometimes numbers can be misleading, and in this case should result in a generous price on an up-and-coming youngster making her stakes debut.

Passing Out received just a 76 Beyer Figure for winning a competitive first-level allowance race at Saratoga on Aug. 9. That is 10 to 13 points lower than leading Pebbles contenders Blowout, Seek and Destroy, Eyeinthesky, and Feel Glorious received in their most recent starts.

But as anyone who watched Passing Out’s last race knows, the homebred daughter of Orb could have run faster if she had not been blocked behind horses while full of run from the three-eighths pole until inside the sixteenth marker. She finally exploded through a narrow opening to register a game three-quarter-length decision under jockey Jose Ortiz while under wraps at the wire.

“She’s still learning and I think she grew up a lot in the last race,” said trainer Shug McGaughey. “I’m watching the race and thinking to myself she’s in trouble, in trouble, in trouble, and all of a sudden she got through and won.”

McGaughey said he has been high all along on Passing Out.

“We always thought a lot of this filly and gave her plenty of time after she broke her maiden in her first start,” McGaughey said. “She came back and ran terrible, which was very disappointing. We did a lot of work with her after that race, schooling in the paddock, this and that. She ran well the race before last, and after her last performance this is the next logical place to give it a try.”

Trainer Chad Brown will send out the two likely favorites, Blowout and Seek and Destroy, while Chris Clement counters with Feel Glorious and East. Eyeinthesky and Alasaayil complete the field. Bellera is entered for the main track only.

Blowout turns back to likely her most effective distance after finishing third, beaten a neck, while leading most of the way in the Grade 2 Lake Placid going 1 1/16 miles last month at Saratoga.

Seek and Destroy captured the Ontario Colleen by three lengths earlier this summer at Woodbine, her second Grade 3 win of the year. She upset the Soaring Softly in her 2019 debut here on May 18.

Feel Glorious finished second, a length behind Seek and Destroy, in the seven-furlong Soaring Softly but finished a wide-running sixth and last in the Lake Placid.

East may be the most intriguing member of the lineup. She will be making her U.S. debut and first since being transferred to Clement’s barn during the summer. East, an English-bred daughter of Frankel, was Group 1-placed this spring at Longchamp.

Eyeinthesky owns the two highest Beyer Figures in the field, a 90 for her second-place finish behind odds-on favorite Break Even in the Coronation Cup and an 89 she received after rallying to a victory in the Galway Stakes. Both those races were decided at 5 1/2 furlongs. She finished off the board in her only two starts at a mile.