Silver State, after winning Met Mile, may stretch out for Whitney in next start
ELMONT, N.Y. - The Metropolitan Handicap is the premier one-mile dirt race in the country. It's considered a stallion-making race, so winning it is good for a horse’s long-term career.
In the short term, however, the winner of the Met Mile has to either turn back or stretch out in distance to run in a significant race. Given his success in races run from seven furlongs to 1 1/8 miles, Silver State gives his connections multiple options. As of Sunday morning, Steve Asmussen, Silver State's trainer, was of the mindset of stretching him out to 1 1/8 miles in the Grade 1, $1 million Whitney at Saratoga on Aug. 8.
“You don’t have a series of comparable mile races anywhere in the country,” Asmussen said Sunday. “With Silver State’s previous victories up to a mile and an eighth, the Whitney is to be considered.”
The premier seven-furlong race at Saratoga is the Grade 1 Forego on April 28.
Silver State beat By My Standards by one length Saturday to give Asmussen his third Met Mile victory in the last four years. Silver State, a son of Hard Spun owned by Ron Winchell and Willis Horton, won his sixth consecutive race, a streak that started last October in a seven-furlong race at Keeneland. He got a 100 Beyer Speed Figure for the victory.
Silver State’s victory at 1 1/8 miles came in the Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap on April 17.
Were he to run in the Whitney, Silver State could again meet By My Standards, whose connections are still seeking a Grade 1 victory with the 5-year-old son of Goldencents. The closest he came to such a victory was in last year’s Whitney, in which he finished second to Improbable.
Meanwhile, Knicks Go, who finished fourth as the favorite in the Met Mile, will run in races around two turns for the foreseeable future, trainer Brad Cox said.
“I had some concerns with that coming in,” Cox said of the one-turn configuration of the Met Mile. “I just think he’s the kind of horse that’s a little better if he can get the lead and get away a little bit. He runs the turns really well. That seems to be what he wants to do.”
Silver State’s victory in the Met Mile earned him an automatic, fees-paid berth in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, a race Knicks Go won last year.