Speedsters could create blazing pace in Kentucky Turf Cup

Balladeer could have been lone speed last weekend in the Del Mar Turf Cup but was scratched to race Saturday in the Grade 2 Kentucky Turf Cup at Kentucky Downs. This is called adding fuel to the fire.

Balladeer has been the first-call leader his last eight starts. He won’t be getting loose Saturday. Cathkin Peak, making his first start since being claimed for $80,000 and turned over to trainer Mike Maker, went wire to wire in the John’s Call at Saratoga. Sugoi, another Maker-trained starter, led the Arlington Million by five lengths at one point. Chief Little Rock, in from Ireland for trainer Aidan O’Brien, has been a pure speed horse overseas to the extent he appeared to be used as a pacemaker in the King Edward VII at Royal Ascot, fading to 12th after leading by a wide margin.

Yet none of these is the likely pacesetter in the 1 1/2-mile Turf Cup.

Get Smokin led from start to finish winning this race a year ago, and he proved July 20 that his 19-1 Turf Cup victory wasn’t just smoke and mirrors, setting a strong pace and holding on to win the $600,000, Grade 2 United Nations at Monmouth. The 7-year-old has run exactly one race over 1 1/2 miles, galloping his competition into the ground at Kentucky Downs.

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“We don’t send Get Smokin. We put a tremendous amount of faith in letting the horse do what he wants to do,” said Harlan Malter, managing partner of Ironhorse Racing, which owns Get Smokin with BlackRidge Stables and Saratoga Seven Racing Partnership.

Malter conceived the plan of trying the 2023 Turf Cup after Get Smokin had set the pace and finished fourth going 1 1/4 miles in an Ellis Park prep for Kentucky Downs. Malter believed Get Smokin’s natural speed would prove more effective in longer turf races than in the middle distances over which he’d raced throughout his career. That bet returned a little less than $1 million, Get Smokin’s payday a year ago.

This Grade 2 contest offers a potential purse of $2 million, a $1 million base and another million for Kentucky-breds, of which there are nine among the 11 entrants. The race is part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series, offering the winner automatic fees-paid entry into the Breeders’ Cup Turf and travel expenses to Del Mar.

Get Smokin traveled to Santa Anita for the 2023 BC Turf before suffering an injury that kept him from starting. Trainer Mark Casse in June brought the gelding back in the 1 1/16-mile Eclipse at Woodbine, a mere tune-up, before Get Smokin held on by a nose in the U.N. over fellow Turf Cup starter Grand Sonata, with Tawny Part, also part of Saturday’s field, a head farther back in third.

Regular rider Fernando De La Cruz let Get Smokin roll through an opening half-mile in 47.77 and a second half in 47.83, a testing pace that his mount withstood.

“Fernando’s going to let Get Smokin get comfortable. If he’s on the lead, he’s on the lead, or maybe he’ll follow a horse,” Malter said.

Casse is winless so far at the meet with nine starters and Maker, a five-time Turf Cup winner, has only gotten three third-place finishes from 16 starters.

Trainer Shug McGaughey, 0-1-0 with five runners at the meet, has the morning-line Turf Cup favorite, Integration. Integration, who has a listed stakes win from five 2024 starts, had his first race beyond 1 1/8 miles in the 1 1/4-mile Arlington Million last month, finishing second behind Nations Pride. Integration got his last quarter-mile of the Million in 22.20 seconds, which seems fast but was only third-best among six runners. Now he runs a quarter-mile farther. By Quality Road, Integration makes his first Kentucky Downs start. Jockey Kendrick Carmouche has ridden one race, in 2018, at this quirky European-style course.

Integration should race from well off the pace Saturday and figures to be placed near trainer Brian Lynch’s two runners, Highway Robber and Anglophile, 4-year-olds with upset potential.

“The pace scenario in this race could set up for these horses,” Lynch said.

The pair exits the 1 1/4-mile Ellis Park prep for the Turf Cup, where Highway Robber made a sustained run from the three-eighths pole and won by one length. Anglophile, snarled in traffic off the far turn and into upper stretch, finished fastest for third. Anglophile has 1 1/2-mile form and a 2023 win over the course in the Dueling Grounds Derby. While Highway Robber finished fifth in the one-mile Gun Runner at Kentucky Downs, Lynch said the horse was tailing off at the time, and that Highway Robber, who never has gone farther than 1 1/4 miles, might suit this distance.

“I think he’s looking for more ground. I think he’s going to improve again,” Lynch said.

Saturday’s card is the first this meet with the temporary rail taken down and racing conducted along the hedge. Such was the case a year ago, when the course throughout the card helped along the right speed horse. That was Get Smokin in the Turf Cup. It might be again.

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