Transparent to lead McLaughlin team on Cigar Mile Day

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Last year, Kiaran McLaughlin captured one of the four graded stakes run at Aqueduct on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. He came within a nose and a neck of winning two more.

That was with three horses. This year, McLaughlin is planning a full-out assault on the four graded stakes held on the final Saturday of November at Aqueduct.

McLaughlin has as many as seven horses he is considering for the smorgasbord of stakes, including Transparent for the Grade 1 Cigar Mile; Gap Year for the Grade 1 Demoiselle; Classy Class, Frosted, and perhaps Imperia for the Grade 2 Remsen; and Penwith for the Grade 3 Comely.

On Sept. 18, Transparent came off an eight-month layoff to set a track record in winning a second-level allowance race at Belmont in 1:39.22 for 1 1/16 miles. A 4-year-old son of Bernardini, Transparent earned a career-best 103 Beyer Speed Figure. After that race, McLaughlin didn’t have anywhere to run Transparent, though he briefly flirted with the idea of the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile.

“That was a bit ambitious,” McLaughlin said. “So is the Cigar Mile, but the timing is better. He ran very fast, obviously.”

Transparent has twice run in one-mile races over Aqueduct’s main track. In 2012, he finished fourth to Orb on the Cigar Mile undercard. In April 2013, he won a first-level allowance race by 10 3/4 lengths.

Last year, McLaughlin came within a nose of winning the Remsen with Cairo Prince, who was nipped at the wire by Honor Code.

McLaughlin has recent maiden winners Frosted and Classy Class as well as Imperia in mind for this year’s Remsen. Imperia was stopped cold while trying to rally along the rail in the stretch of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, finishing 10th, beaten only 3 3/4 lengths.

“Unlucky,” was how McLaughlin described the trip.

Imperia is by Medaglia d’Oro out of the dam Cocoa Beach, who was a graded stakes winner on turf and dirt. McLaughlin said he may want to find out sooner rather than later if Imperia can handle the dirt.

Meanwhile, Frosted, a son of Tapit, won a one-mile maiden race by 5 1/4 lengths at Aqueduct on Oct. 30 after running second in sprint maiden races at Saratoga and Belmont. Classy Class, a son of Discreetly Mine, was a smart-looking four-length winner of his debut Oct. 25 at Belmont.

McLaughlin said he likely won’t run three in the Remsen. If he elects to run all three that weekend, one would ship to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Jockey Club.

A headstrong Gap Year handled two turns by winning a 1 1/16-mile maiden race at Keeneland on Oct. 23, 20 days after finishing seventh in the Grade 1 Alcibiades. She is being pointed to the Demoiselle at 1 1/8 miles.

In last year’s Demoiselle, Penwith set the pace before being run down late by Stopchargingmaria and Got Lucky, losing by a neck. Penwith, coming off a third-place finish in the Indiana Oaks, is expected to make her next start in the Grade 3, $400,000 Comely. McLaughlin also is pointing Divided Attention to that race. Divided Attention came off a long layoff to win a first-level allowance race at Saratoga by 5 1/2 lengths before finishing 10th in the Grade 2 Raven Run at Keeneland.

While McLaughlin seems well armed for Cigar Mile Day, it does appear that he will be sending three Godolphin-owned horses to Dubai for that country’s winter racing carnival. Long River, third in the Jockey Club Gold Cup; Bay of Plenty, second in the Discovery; and Pazolini, an allowance winner here on Sunday, are all in Ocala, Fla., to start a quarantine period. McLaughlin said plans could change to keep one or more of those horses in the U.S., but for now, they’re earmarked for Dubai.