McGaughey Readies the 'First Team' for Grade 1 Stakes

For most stables, the final months of any year are a relatively slow time, perfect for unwinding and crafting plans for the new year while giving their star runners a dose of some well-deserved time off.

Yet for trainer Shug McGaughey, after a relatively slow start and the departure of two highly valuable assistants during the first six months of the year, the final increasingly chilly weeks of 2020 in Kentucky and New York could be his most productive of the year and feature the kind of top-level success that seemed destined to happen much earlier in the year but eluded his grasp.

Unusual? Of course. But surprising? Not in 2020.

During a year that stretched into October before he recorded his first grade 1 win of the year, the Hall of Fame trainer is hopeful that the spark of recent graded stakes wins by Civil Union in the Oct. 10 Flower Bowl Stakes (G1T) and North Dakota in the Nov. 21 Red Smith Stakes (G3T) will create some momentum heading into the next two weeks when the stable's two brightest stars will try to close the year with grade 1 wins.

"COVID-19 threw a lot of wrinkles into our plans in the spring, but these things run in cycles," McGaughey said after the Red Smith. "We had a down cycle there for a bit, and maybe this will help us get going in the right way. We've been running the third string for a while."

Heading into 2020, McGaughey had two naturals for the year's most important stakes in his "first team" of Will Farish's 2019 Runhappy Travers Stakes (G1) and Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes (G1) winner Code of Honor and Phipps Stable and Claiborne Farm's highly regarded Performer. Yet heading into Code of Honor's Nov. 27 start in the Clark Stakes Presented by Norton Healthcare (G1) at Churchill Downs and Performer's initial grade 1 date in the Dec. 5 Cigar Mile Handicap (G1) at Aqueduct Racetrack, they have a single grade 3 win between them to their credit in 2020 with a combined mark of just five starts—none of them in a Breeders' Cup race—and two wins since Jan. 1 when they both turned 4.

"It's nice to have the first team back," McGaughey said.

Following a disappointing seventh in last year's Longines Breeders' Cup Classic (G1), the COVID-19-related cancellation of important stakes and meets in the spring kept Code of Honor on the sidelines until June 6, when the $2.5 million earner returned from a seven-month layoff and posted a half-length victory in the 1 1/16-mile Westchester Stakes (G3) on a muddy track. After closing 2019 in three straight 1 1/4-mile grade 1 stakes, longer distances seemed a good fit for the homebred son of Noble Mission . But with stakes schedules in flux due to the pandemic, McGaughey opted for the July 4 one-turn-mile Runhappy Metropolitan Handicap (G1), where Code of Honor could not reel in the speedy Vekoma  and finished third.

"Running in the Met Mile might have been a mistake," said the winner of 2,134 races and the trainer of 10 champions in his illustrious career, "but it's a hard race to pass up."

A month later, back on the Saratoga Race Course surface on which he won the Travers, Code of Honor never fired in the Whitney Stakes (G1) and finished five lengths behind the victorious Improbable in fourth as the 5-2 second choice.

"The cancellations got in Code of Honor's way, and he had to start out late and then things were bunched up for him," McGaughey said. 

Following a two-month break, McGaughey brought the son of the Dixie Union mare Reunited back in the mile Kelso Handicap (G2) and received a much more competitive runner-up effort, which the Hall of Famer views as an important steppingstone to an even better performance in the Clark.

"He's doing really well now and I like the way his races are spaced now, and I think he likes it, too," he said.

The runner-up in the 2019 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) at Churchill Downs, Code of Honor completed his preparations for the Clark with an easy :49.67 breeze Nov. 22 at Belmont Park.

He'll need a top effort against 13 rivals in the $500,000 Clark, which drew a field of 14, plus an also-eligible entrant. Among the top rivals for Code of Honor, who will break from post 3, are multiple grade 2 winners and grade 1-placed Mr Freeze and By My Standards, plus Bodexpress, Aurelius Maximus, and Owendale, who was second in last year's Clark.

"Physically, he's acting better than I've ever seen him," said McGaughey, who will ship Code of Honor to Kentucky Nov. 23. "But we'll have to see what happens when we lead him over there. He's run well over the track before. Johnny Velazquez will ride him and he knows him, so we're pretty confident."

Should Code of Honor run to expectations Friday, McGaughey said the Jan 23 $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes Presented by Runhappy (G1) at Gulfstream Park would be in play.

"We'll point to the Pegasus if he runs well in the Clark and take it from there, but we want him to be a player in the handicap division, especially in New York," said McGaughey, who added an overseas start, such as the Dubai World Cup Sponsored by Emirates Airline (G1), was not out of the question.

Following Code of Honor's return to the grade 1 stage, Performer will make his long-awaited top-level debut in the Cigar Mile.

McGaughey has adopted a patient approach for Performer, a Speightstown  colt bred by the Phipps Stable. Following a third in his Nov. 2018 debut, Performer's next three starts—all wins—came in a maiden race and a pair of allowance-level tests. Finally, in his fifth start, he closed 2019 with an impressive win over grade 2 winner Tax in the Nov. 30 Discovery Stakes (G3) at Aqueduct.

The nine-time Breeders' Cup winner vowed to remain patient with Performer, but his return to the races was complicated by cancellations. Performer was set to make his 2020 debut in the Runhappy Carter Handicap (G1) at Aqueduct in early April, but that seven-furlong stakes was pushed back to June 6. Before the Carter was run, he suffered an ankle issue that kept him sidelined until Oct. 17, when he won a mile allowance optional claimer in a blistering 1:33.93. That McGaughey would put Performer in the Cigar Mile against highly formidable rivals off a single allowance race in a little more than a year speaks volumes for the confidence he has in the son of the A.P. Indy mare Protesting.

"I was impressed with the way he ran. I know it was an allowance race and the competition was not what it will be in the Cigar Mile, but I got into him what I wanted to get into him," McGaughey said. "It was a solid effort, and he's come out of it good."

Based on what happens in the Cigar Mile, the 1 1/8-mile Pegasus could also be in play for Performer.

"I'd hate to have them bump heads because someone has to lose," McGaughey said, "but we'll take that medicine as it comes."

While Code of Honor and Performer may be saving their best for last in 2020, it's been a trying yet productive year for McGaughey.

In Joseph Allen's Civil Union, he has a multiple graded stakes winner who was a troubled fifth, beaten by less than two lengths, in the Maker's Mark Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf (G1T). With a bevy of this year's top female distance turf runners heading to the breeding shed in 2021, the 5-year-old War Front  mare figures to be a major player in the division next year.

"I thought she ran well at the Breeders' Cup," the Kentucky native said. "She got stopped at the 5/16ths pole. She's a big filly, and (jockey Joel Rosario) had a hard time getting her going again, but she finished up well. She's at Payson Park now and will probably return at Keeneland if things are back to normal. She's come a long way in a short amount of time, and with a break, hopefully she can build off that."

McGaughey also has a pair of promising 2-year-old colts for Courtlandt Farms in Ten for Ten and Greatest Honour. 

A son of Frosted  bought for $410,000 out of the Hill 'n' Dale Sales Agency consignment at the 2019 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, Ten for Ten was second in the Nashua Stakes (G3) and will run next in the Dec. 5 Remsen Stakes (G2) at Aqueduct.

Greatest Honour, a homebred son of Tapit , has a second and two thirds in three starts, but McGaughey believes "he could be a good one once the light goes on."

Overall, through a solid summer and fall, McGaughey has put together a fine year, winning at a 23% clip that represents his best figure since 2001, when he posted a 24% mark. He's won 18 races since the start of September, pushing him to 51 wins for the year and topping his 2019 and 2018 totals. If he can win four more races by year's end, it would give him the most wins since he had 57, also in 2001.

The 69-year-old McGaughey surely had to work harder than he has in past years for those wins as he had to take on added duties after two trusted aides left the fold.

First, his son, Reeve, who has worked with his dad for the last five years, left in February to train his own string of horses, and then Robbie Medina, who worked alongside McGaughey for about 25 years, took a position in May as the manager/trainer of Blackwood Stables.

"As rough as COVID-19 was, at least we were able to race. The transition at the stable has been different," the 2004 Hall of Famer said. "When you lose a guy in Robbie, who has been working for you for 25 years, and also your son, who has been following you around, and you get people who are new to everything you do, it makes it more time-consuming for me than it would normally be. But things are falling into place. They're catching on."

McGaughey brought in former trainer Anthony Hamilton Jr. as his main assistant in New York, and Lindsay Schultz will handle the Gulfstream Park string, with Adam Newman and Hamilton at Payson Park during the winter.

It's a different cast of characters, but at least one thing has remained the same. There's still plenty of talent among the horses in McGaughey's barn, including a first team that would be coveted by any trainer.