Yaupon among loaded field in attempt to get Grade 1 credentials in Forego

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – There are five Grade 1 winners among the eight horses entered for Saturday’s $600,000 Forego at Saratoga. Yaupon is not one of them.

Yet it is Yaupon who is the 5-2 morning-line favorite and likely one to catch in the seven-furlong Forego, a race that figures to have major implications for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

Yaupon ran two sensational races over the local strip a year ago, earning triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures as a 3-year-old winning an allowance race and then the Grade 2 Amsterdam in wire-to-wire fashion. Following another easy victory in the Grade 3 Chick Lang at Pimlico during the fall, Yaupon was sent postward the 6-5 favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. But he got off to a bit of a tardy start and found himself in unfamiliar territory, chasing the early leaders before finishing eighth in a race won by last year’s sprint champion Whitmore.

Yaupon will get a second chance at Whitmore in the Forego while also facing Grade 1 winners Mind Control, Lexitonian, Firenze Fire, and Mischevious Alex The lineup also includes Doubly Blessed and Chance It.

Yaupon has started just twice since the 2020 Breeders’ Cup. He never threatened in the Group 1 Dubai Golden Shaheen in March before bouncing back to capture the Lite The Fuse Stakes on July 4 at Pimlico. The Forego will mark the first time he’s raced beyond six furlongs. He breaks from post 7 under Ricardo Santana Jr.

The imposing task at hand is not lost on trainer Steve Asmussen, who acknowledges there is a tremendous amount at stake for Yaupon and his connections on Saturday.

“He’s run brilliantly at Saratoga in the past, he’s coming off a very fast win, he’s training really well, and we’re excited for the opportunity,” said Asmussen, who won the 2019 Forego with Mitole. “I thought he drew perfectly for seven-eighths, and I think that’s a distance that is well within his scope. He’s getting weight from some of the other horses, and I’ll take every single straw and hair we can get. But it’s an outstanding field and he’s lacking a Grade 1 win on his résumé, so obviously this race means a lot for us. We’re all in on this one.”

Yaupon carries 118 pounds under the allowance conditions of the Forego, six less than Whitmore, Mischevious Alex, and Lexitonian,

Whitmore seeks to get back on the winning track for the first time since his convincing 3 1/4-length triumph in the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Sprint. Although he is without a victory this season, he has yet to run a poor race. He finished second twice to start the year and third in his last two starts, the Grade 1 Churchill Downs and Grade 1 Alfred Vanderbilt Handicap here July 31. Whitmore will race without bar shoes on Saturday for the first time since he captured the 2018 Forego. He is part-owned and trained by Ron Moquett.

Mind Control, whose two Grade 1 wins came going seven furlongs at Saratoga in the Hopeful at 2 and Allen Jerkens at 3, is coming off a game victory over Firenze Fire in the Grade 2 John Nerud Stakes last month at Belmont Park. The pair went eyeball to eyeball for virtually the entire seven furlongs before Mind Control prevailed by a head while making his first start since being switched to trainer Todd Pletcher’s barn shortly after his seventh-place finish in the Churchill Downs.

“This is a different complexion here,” Pletcher said. “In the Nerud, we felt we had one horse to beat if we let him have an easy lead, and that wasn’t going to happen. This race, there’s plenty of other speed in here, so we can let him run his race. It’s a tough race for sure. It’s a deep field. But he’s put together a pretty impressive record and there’s certainly something to be said for the fact he’s already won two Grade 1 races going seven furlongs at Saratoga.”

Lexitonian must prove his half-length triumph in the six-furlong Vanderbilt here July 31 at odds of 34-1 was not a fluke. He finished second, beaten a head by Flagstaff, at an even bigger price three months earlier in the Churchill Downs. Lexitonian finished fifth over a sloppy track in the 2020 Forego.

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Firenze Fire was a troubled fifth, nearly five lengths behind Lexitonian, in the Vanderbilt. That followed his second in the Nerud and victories in the Grade 2 True North and Grade 3 Runhappy at Belmont Park to begin the campaign. His lone Grade 1 win came as a 2-year-old in the Champagne, with his $2.5 million in earnings second in this lineup behind only Whitmore.

Mischevious Alex is one of two contenders trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. runs in the Forego along with Chance It. Mischevious Alex dominated the Grade 1 Carter Handicap earlier this season and ran a strong third in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap before running eighth as the 7-5 favorite here earlier this summer in the Vanderbilt. Joseph said Mischevious Alex came down with a pretty serious case of an electrolyte imbalance called the thumps in Vanderbilt.

– additional reporting by David Grening