Up With the Birds Prepared for Sam-Son Goal

Up With the Birds tries the Arlington Million for the second time on Saturday. (Photo by NYRA/Coglianese Photos)
When Up With the Birds moved to Graham Motion’s barn earlier this year, Sam-Son Farm had one goal in mind for the former Canadian Horse of the Year: a win in the Arlington Million.
This weekend, Up With the Birds will get a chance to accomplish that goal when he loads in the gate for his second Arlington Million try.
Last year, when he was in training with Malcolm Pierce, Up With the Birds came into the race with a similar race pattern. The horse had run in the Dixie Stakes for his season debut, finishing sixth, before winning the Grade 2 Nijinsky Stakes in mid-July.
Up With the Birds finished fourth in the Arlington Million that year and went on to finish second in the Knickerbocker Stakes before finishing off the board in the Japan Cup. There was talk about sending Up With the Birds somewhere else to train but Sam-Son decided instead to send the horse to Motion.
“It’s an honor to have a horse for such a well-known operation,” Motion said. “It’s an operation I’ve followed for a long time, and it’s the first time I’ve had a horse for them. So really, it’s great to be involved with operations with that kind of history and those kind of horses.”
This year, Up With the Birds doesn’t come into the Million with a victory but has put together a solid two-race campaign with third-place finishes in the Dixie Stakes and the July 11 Arlington Handicap on the same turf course he’ll be running on in the Million.
UP WITH THE BIRDS WINS THE JAMAICA HANDICAP

Photo by Eclipse Sportswire
Motion is happy with how Up With the Birds is coming into this year’s edition of the race. In his final workout before the Million, Up With the Birds worked four furlongs on Fair Hill’s turf course on Monday afternoon in a time of 49 seconds. Current plans have the 5-year-old leaving Motion’s base at Fair Hill Wednesday evening to get to the track Thursday morning.
“I think he’s done well [in preparation for the race]. He’s had two races now and he actually just had his last workout [Monday] afternoon, we just came back from breezing him over on the grass course here at Fair Hill. I think he’s done well, I was very happy with how he just went,” Motion said.
While it looks like Up With the Birds will have to compete against a bigger field than the six horses he took on last year, Motion said he is horse who can adapt to most situations and doesn’t need to be in a certain position to do well.
“I think he can really be put anywhere in the race. He was a little unlucky last time, he got shuffled back early on in the race, which I think made it hard for him. But he can lay fairly close or he can come just off the pace. He’s a pretty adaptable horse,” he said.
An Arlington Million victory would also provide Up With the Birds an automatic berth into the Breeders’ Cup Turf, a race that Motion said the group would be happy to take on if they leave Arlington Park on Saturday evening with the Arlington Million trophy.