Maximum Security Bound for Saratoga and the Travers

A day after serving up a reminder of his brilliance in the spring, Gary and Mary West's Maximum Security was enjoying a well-deserved day of a rest in his Monmouth Park stall, complete with a couple of fans and a cooling blanket to shield him from the heat and humidity.

"Physically, he's 100 percent," trainer Jason Servis said July 21. "But he's tired. He laid down for quite a while this morning. He's a pretty tired puppy."

The homebred son of New Year's Day was back at the top of his game July 20 as he rebounded from the sting of having a rival finish in front of him for the first time to post a 1 1/4-length victory in the $990,000 TVG.com Haskell Invitational Stakes (G1) for 3-year-olds on a humid day at Monmouth when the broiling heat stretched into the upper 90s.

While Maximum Security's record shows five wins in seven starts, one of the defeats came in the May 4 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1) when he was victorious by 1 3/4 lengths but was disqualified for interference and placed 17th.

Remove that from the mix and it leaves a runner-up finish in the June 16 TVG.com Pegasus Stakes at Monmouth, when he stumbled at the start, as the lone time someone finished in front of a horse whose career started in December in a $16,000 maiden claimer.

He also has two grade 1 wins at 3, something the other leading candidates for the 3-year-old title lack and which points him out as the pro-tem division leader.

"If he's not the division leader, I don't know what it takes," Gary West said.

Though there was indecision in Servis' mind about running in the Pegasus, the race certainly seemed to have Maximum Security on edge for a sharp performance in the 1 1/8-mile Haskell, which was delayed to an 8:12 p.m. ET post time.

"He started cycling around into top form after the Pegasus," Servis said. "He's a good horse, and good horses make you look good."

The Xpressbet Florida Derby winner (G1) locked up a free spot in the Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) by capturing the Haskell, a Breeders' Cup Challenge race, but he might make an appearance in a 1 1/4-mile grade 1 stakes prior to that.

The Runhappy Travers Stakes (G1) at Saratoga Race Course is the next target, and Servis plans to send Maximum Security to the Spa as early as July 26 to prepare for the Aug. 24 Mid-Summer Derby. Being as cautious as ever, Servis said he would monitor Maximum Security's training over the next five weeks and probably decide during the week of the Travers whether his 3-year-old is ready for a third race in 69 days.

"I want to give him a few days and get some fluids into him," said Servis, who plans to race his other multiple grade 1 winner, World of Trouble, in the $200,000 Troy Stakes (G3T) Aug. 3 at Saratoga. "I'll treat him like we're running and make a decision the week of the race if we're running."

Servis said the $1 million Pennsylvania Derby (G1) Sept. 21 at Parx Racing is also an option, though he called the racing surface there "a little funny." He said he would want to work Maximum Security on the track before committing to run there.

"There's not many options left for him at this point in the year," Servis said.

Michael Lund Petersen's Mucho Gusto, who finished second to Maximum Security in the Haskell, may also be racing at Saratoga on Aug. 24, but not in the Travers. Trainer Bob Baffert said he'll decide between targeting the seven-furlong $500,000 H. Allen Jerkens Memorial Stakes Presented by Runhappy (G1) or the Pennsylvania Derby at the same 1 1/8-mile distance as the Travers.

"(Assistant trainer) Jimmy (Barnes) told me he looked good after the race, and he came out in great shape," said Baffert, an eight-time winner of the Haskell who remained in California. "He gave us a thrill. Michael Lund was pretty excited about it. He faced the best 3-year-old and ran right with him."

Though Mucho Gusto, a multiple grade 3-winning son of Mucho Macho Man whom Lund bought for $625,000 from the Kirkwood Stables consignment at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale, will be sitting out the Travers, it doesn't mean Baffert will not have a rooting interest in a race that figures to have a huge say in who becomes the 3-year-old champion.

"I'm going," said Baffert, who has won two of the past three runnings of the Travers. "I'll be there."

Baffert will be in town with the Wests' other leading hopeful for the 3-year-old title, Game Winner.

The division's 2-year-old champion a year ago, Game Winner is coming off a sharp victory in the Los Alamitos Derby (G3) and seems to be on an upswing headed into a possible rematch with his stablemate. Game Winner had a troubled trip in the Kentucky Derby, finishing fifth, and came out of the race with a sore back that sidelined him for a little more than months.

The Travers field will come into sharper focus with the running of two stakes for 3-year-olds at Saratoga, the July 26 $100,000 Curlin for horses without a graded stakes win over a mile in 2019, and the $600,000 Jim Dandy Stakes (G2) the following day.

Gary Barber's Preakness Stakes (G1) winner War of Will and Juddmonte Farms' Tacitus, who was second in the Belmont Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets (G1) and third in the Kentucky Derby, head the list of candidates for the Jim Dandy.

As memorable as the Haskell was for the stretch duel between Maximum Security and Mucho Gusto—and the stewards' inquiry against Maximum Security that was quickly dropped—the 52nd running of the Haskell also figures to be long remembered for the heat and the impact it had on the card.

After two races were completed about 45 minutes behind schedule on a day when the heat index hovered around 110, a decision was made to cancel the remaining six non-stakes races and resume the card after a roughly 4-hour, 45-minute break at 6 p.m. with the day's six stakes races.

Though a large segment of the announced crowd of 25,173 was on hand for the Haskell, the day was a huge strain on the Jersey Shore track's bottom line.

Attendance was down 32.3% from the 2018 figure of 37,186. On-track handle dropped dramatically by 68.9% from $1,965,661 to $610,813, and all-sources handle was off 36.1% from $13,395,373 to $8,556,664.

The five graded stakes, which included Midnight Bisou winning the Molly Pitcher Stakes (G3), had a total of 24 starters.

"It was not a good day financially," said Dennis Drazin, the CEO and chairman of Darby Development, which operates Monmouth Park. "A lot of people were upset that they had the break, and they walked out on their checks or wanted refunds. We'll give everyone the opportunity to come back and give them vouchers."

Drazin said the decision to cancel races and delay the card was not a "knee-jerk" reaction, and he defended his decision not to scrap the card days in advance as other tracks did, including Saratoga, Delaware Park, Laurel Park, Parx, and Finger Lakes.

"In my world, I'm sure we could have gotten through the day without incident. There have been worse days when you ran without problems. At the end of the day, I was conservative to make sure I was protecting the horses and the jockeys. To an extent, I was reacting to public outcry. As a businessman, you can't let all the peer pressure make the decisions for you, but it's proper to consider it and evaluate it in context. I'm glad we got the races done and preserved all the stakes," said Drazin, an attorney who owns and breeds horses in New Jersey. "This was not a decision that came lightly. It was several days in the making. Maybe I'm cynical about this, but the weather people have been so wrong for the past year, and I did not want to make a knee-jerk reaction because some other tracks had closed and they were predicting it to be hot. We've run in hot weather before."

A number of trainers and jockeys, including Kentucky Derby winner Graham Motion and Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, echoed Drazin's comments about enduring hotter weather at Monmouth and other warm-weather tracks.

"I've certainly run on days as hot as this before, and I was comfortable with my horses running," said Motion, who won the delayed Oceanport Stakes (G3T) with Skeedattle Stable's Just Howard. "Ultimately, I think it was a good decision. I just wish they made it 12 or 24 hours earlier."

Drazin said his plan was to conduct two races and then decide how to handle the rest of the card after checking with state veterinarians as well as horsemen and jockeys. In the end, he delayed the stakes rather than cancel them out of a concern for the physical well-being of the horses and jockeys and an understanding that there was enough time to run the six stakes in cooler, evening temperatures.

"We knew it would be cooler at 6 p.m., so we counted down the time between races and felt we could run between 6-8:30 p.m.," he said. "You can't just move major stakes to another weekend and expect all the horses to come back and have the card stay together."

Monmouth canceled Sunday's 11-race card, which was topped by the $75,000 Spruce Fir Handicap, and moved it to July 26 as the heat wave stretched into a third day.

What troubled Drazin was the specter that heat is an inevitable factor with summer racing and a belief that the cancellations around him were due to pressure from groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals due to the 30 fatalities at the recent Santa Anita Park meet.

"The scary part is that if you have heat and cancel one day and then on another hot day if you have an incident, everyone will be crying, 'You knew you were going to have problems with the heat and you should have canceled that day, too.' Particularly with global warming, where are we going? Are all of the tracks going to be governed by PETA reaching out and contacting the world and creating social media frenzies and everybody reacts to that? It seems like that's the era we're in, whether we like it or not."

Drazin warned there could also be legal issues if racetracks do not adopt consistent standards for racing on humid days.

"My living is litigation, and if I was going after a racetrack for not canceling when it's hot, and they had canceled and set a precedent Saturday when the temperatures and indexes were lower, they are dead. They don't have a basis to say they did the right thing. If you cancel one day and then race when the indexes were higher, you do not have a leg to stand on," he said.

Though it's more of an idea to mull over than something he will actively pursue, Drazin also wondered whether Monmouth needs to follow the lead of the Meadowlands and install lights.

"I'm not serious about it, I'm just posing the question: Do I now look at lights for Monmouth Park because I am going to have to cancel because of the heat?" he said. "The last time we looked at it, there was a cost of about $10 million for lights because you have to light areas like the parking lots. Should I consider that so we don't have this problem again with the heat? It's not something you want to do, but it's something to consider if we let ourselves move into the new territory of allowing PETA to control the agenda."