Super Swift flying under the radar for comeback
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Merica’s Back looks like a strong favorite in Thursday’s second-level allowance/optional $45,000 claiming feature at Aqueduct, but there is a horse returning from an extended layoff who looms a potential upsetter in the 6 1/2-furlong race.
Super Swift, unraced since a last-place finish in the Central Park Stakes at Aqueduct on turf last May, returns from a 278-day layoff for trainer George Weaver. Weaver is 7 for 19 at the Aqueduct winter meet and has won with five of his last seven starters.
Super Swift, a 4-year-old by Vekoma, will race as a gelding for the first time and returns to dirt, a surface on which he is 2 for 4 including a debut victory in an off-the-turf race at Aqueduct in September 2024 and a first-level allowance win last March.
“He’s run against some decent horses in the past,” said Weaver, referring to Prince Valiant who on Feb. 6 won an open-company allowance race with a 100 Beyer Speed Figure. “Running against older horses for the first time, that’s a little different.”
Weaver said Super Swift was gelded because he was “a good feeling horse. Too good feeling. Since we got past the goal of him being a stallion, we decided to do what makes most of them run better.”
Super Swift will get the services of Manny Franco, who just completed a month at Aqueduct in which he won 28 races from 107 mounts, a run that vaulted him from fourth in the jockey standings to first with 40 wins, seven more than Jose Lezcano.
Merica’s Back, trained by Mike Maker, has won two of his last three starts, including a first-level allowance by 6 1/4 lengths. He was racing without blinkers that day for the first time and received an 89 Beyer. In the race prior to that, on Dec. 7, Merica’s Back was away slowly and then herded out and bumped late while finishing third, beaten a neck.
The horse that beat him that day, Beary Funny, has run three times since with two runner-up finishes in this condition and is back in this field.
What’s Up Bro has run in this condition each of his last five races, winning on Aug. 9 at Saratoga and posting runner-up finishes in each of his last two starts. He has been entered for the optional $45,000 claiming tag in each of those starts and has been claimed four times, most recently by Rob Atras.
On the Hill, eased and vanned off in his last start Nov. 7, returns to the races for trainer James Bond.
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