The race for champion older male and potentially Horse of the Year remains a wide open one with Palace Malice as the front-runner after Moonshine Mullin pulled the upset at 10-1 in the $500,000 Stephen Foster Handicap (G1) on Saturday at Churchill Downs.
Ridden by Churchill Downs master Calvin Borel and trained by Randy Morse for owner Randy Patterson, the six-year-old horse prompted the pace and fought valiantly on the front-end to hold off the cavalry charge of Departing (3-1) and Will Take Charge (favored at 5-2). D. Wayne Lukas’s big chestnut colt got a neck advantage over Departing to secure the runner-up position. A son of Albert the Great, Moonshine Mullin completed a mile and an eighth in 1:49.66 under the Twin Spires.
Moonshine Mullin’s career has been one of peaks and valleys. After a runner-up effort in the Jim Dandy (G2) in 2011, he looked like a promising colt with a bright future. His form took a sharp nosedive after that and he went winless until the following summer when he won against allowance/optional claiming company. He switched barns several times and was ultimately claimed from trainer Steve Asmussen by Randy Morse.
He was claimed out of a runner-up effort for a modest price of $40,000 last November. He won his first race for his new connections in February after a handful of starts and has remained undefeated since then, winning five races and steadily climbing the ladder until he reached racing’s pinnacle – Grade 1 competition. The sky seems like the limit for this former stakes horse turned claimer turned stakes horse again.
The field is set for the $1 million Haskell, where Nyquist will be trying to re-stake his claim as the top three-year-old in the country.
On Sunday at Monmouth Park, the featured race is the $300,000 United Nations Stakes. Scheduled to be run at a mile and three-eighths on the turf, the Grade 1 event has drawn a field of ten colts and geldings.
On Sunday at Monmouth Park, the featured race is the $150,000 Pegasus Stakes, a key prep race for the Haskell Invitational (G1). The Grade 3 event will be contested at a mile and a sixteenth and has drawn a field of seven three-year-olds.
With five grade 1 races and a grade 2, the undercard for the June 11 Belmont stakes could be the best single day of racing on the calendar outside of the Breeders’ Cup.
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