White-hot Miller sorry to see 2016 season end
ARCADIA, Calif. - Peter Miller’s stable was in such excellent form in the final days of 2016 that he had four stakes winners in three races.
If that sounds odd, it’s because two of Miller’s runners – Solid Wager and St. Joe Bay finished in a dead heat for first in the $100,000 Midnight Lute Stakes for sprinters on Saturday. Friday, Miller swept the two stakes on the eight-race program, winning the $94,935 Kalookan Queen Stakes for female sprinters with Bad Ju Ju and the $80,580 Eddie Logan Stakes for 2-year-olds on turf with Vending Machine.
Bad Ju Ju and Vending Machine were both claimed for $40,000 in 2016.
“I wish this year wouldn’t end,” he said on Saturday.
Miller finished 2016 with 98 wins and stable earnings of $4,482,498, good enough to rank 22nd in the nation. The figures were a drop from 2015, when he won 118 races and had stable earnings of $5,978,848.
As Miller suggested, the stable has momentum going into 2017. He was the leading trainer at the Del Mar autumn meeting.
Vending Machine is a 3-year-old with a future. He was second in the Grade 3 Cecil B. DeMille Stakes on dirt at Del Mar on Nov. 27, a race transferred from turf to dirt because of wet conditions. The turf stakes schedule for 3-year-olds in Southern California is light in the early months of the year, which could lead Miller and owner Joe Sinnott to consider a stakes on the main track.
“We could give him a shot on dirt,” Miller said. “We can only always have the turf as a fallback.”
Last March, Miller inspected Vending Machine at the Barretts March sale of 2-year-olds in-training at Del Mar, but did not buy the colt, who was listed as bought back for $110,000. Miller did claim Vending Machine for $40,000 at Del Mar in September from his second start.
The colt is a half-brother to Comma to the Top, a millionaire Grade 1 winner Miller trained earlier in this decade.
“That’s why I claimed him,” Miller said. “I liked him at the 2-year-old sale, and he went for more money than I wanted to give.”
Miller joins Hall of Famer Richard Mandella as trainers with stablemates that have dead-heated in a graded stakes. Mandella accomplished the feat when Beautiful Melody and Reluctant Guest finished evenly in the Grade 1 Beverly Hills Handicap at Hollywood Park in 1990.
In the Midnight Lute, St. Joe Bay disputed the pace, while Solid Wager closed from last in a field of five. Miller wasn’t sure what to think at the wire.
“I thought Solid Wager won it live and St. Joe Bay won on the slo-mo,” Miller said. “When I saw the super slo-mo, I thought it was a dead heat.”
Navy Hymn finished last in the Midnight Lute and was pulled up and vanned off after the race. Trainer Richard Baltas said on Sunday that Navy Hymn sustained a condylar fracture in a foreleg and was scheduled to undergo surgery on Monday.
There is guarded optimism the 4-year-old gelding can race again, Baltas said. Navy Hymn has won 6 of 13 starts, but has yet to win a stakes. He was third in the Damascus Stakes here on Nov. 4.