Move over Imperial Hint.
Five days after the sprinter set a 6-furlong track record in winning his second Grade 1 Vanderbilt, King Zachary set another track record on Saratoga Race Course’s main track in Thursday’s Birdstone Stakes going more than twice the distance Imperial Hint traveled Saturday.
Thomas Conway’s 4-year-old colt ran also ran beyond 1 1/4 miles for the first time in the 1 3/4-mile Birdstone and handled the added distance with ease. The Graham Motion-trained colt traveled kindly beneath John Velazquez around the final of three turns and any questions of stamina were nixed when King Zachary drew away in the stretch to win by 8 1/2 lengths.
King Zachary won in 2:52.97, breaking Hall of Famer Reigh Count’s previous mark of 2:55 set Sept. 1, 1928.
“Like I told Johnny in the paddock, ‘if this isn’t what he wants to do, I don’t know what is,’ ” Motion said. “He acted like a horse that just wants to go all day.”
The son of Curlin did that.
King Zachary advanced forward leaving the backstretch into second and set his sights on pacesetting Marconi. Velazquez gave King Zachary one back-handed pop as he passed the eventual runner-up and that was all it took. Velazquez took a look under his right shoulder passing the eighth pole and only showed his mount the whip from there until the wire.
King Zachary showed no signs of an 8 1/2-length or $100,000 stakes victories just eight days earlier. He finished last of seven when trying turf for the first time after shipping to Saratoga from his Fair Hill base. Eight days later, 4 1/2 more furlongs and a switch back to his preferred surface was the perfect recipe to get the big chestnut back in the winner’s circle for the first time since June 18, 2018, when he won Churchill Downs’s Grade 3 Matt Winn Stakes.
“I have to be honest it was my idea. It had kind of been in the back of mind for a while,” Motion said of running King Zachary in the Birdstone. “I snuck in the turf experiment and when that didn’t work out I didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t run back if he was doing well. He’s such a cool horse, I knew he could handle it and the really the grass race just ended up being a bit of a tightener to go into today.”
To read the rest of the Birdstone recap, download Friday’s digital edition of The Saratoga Special presented by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners.
