Black Rock Stable’s Silver Medallion, trained by Todd Pletcher and
ridden by Javier Castellano, moved five-wide entering the stretch to win
the $100,000 Fort Lauderdale (G3) by a neck.
A 4-year-old son of Badge of Silver who entered the Fort Lauderdale
off a victory Dec. 2 in the Tropical Turf Handicap (G3), Silver
Medallion earned his fifth victory in 12 starts. The bay colt has won
half of his eight turf starts and has placed first, second or third in
seven of his eight starts across the turf.
Mutual Trust, making his first start in the U.S., finished sixth.
Jockey Club Gold Cup (G1) winner Flat Out, making his debut across the
turf, checked in 12th.
“Guess he didn’t fire on the turf,” said trainer Charles Dickey of
Flat Out. “He just doesn’t care for it. Alex said he wasn’t liking it at
all. So I’ll make sure he’s OK and look for a race on the dirt. We’ll
definitely be keeping him on the dirt.”
Silver Medallion, who raced just off the pace when winning the
Tropical Turf Handicap, missed the break and entered the first turn
ninth and was 10th down the backstretch before jockey Javier Castellano
moved the colt five-wide around the turn before taking the lead inside
the final eighth of a mile.
“I didn’t want to be that far back,” Castellano said. “He’s not
really an aggressive horse coming from behind, but when I asked him I
was like ‘wow.’ It was such a big pack and I couldn’t go inside so I had
to try and loop the field. He gave me a lot of run and I was very proud
of him.”
Pletcher, who won three races on the day, said; “Javier had to make a
decision to let him settle (rather than rush up), and then he came with
a good run for three eighths. We’ll see how he comes out of it, but
we’ll probably bring him back in the Gulfstream Turf (Handicap, $300,000
(G1) on Feb. 11).”