Metaboss surges to El Camino win
Metaboss confirmed his affinity for distance races by surging to an authoritative 2½-length victory in the Grade 3, $200,525 El Camino Real Derby on Saturday at Golden Gate Fields.
Trained by Jeff Bonde, Metaboss began his career with a third and a fourth in sprints at Santa Anita. Then he finished second going 11⁄16 miles at Del Mar and broke his maiden going 11⁄8 miles Jan. 4 at Santa Anita.
“In those sprints he was in tough with horses with a lot of speed,” Bonde said. “Then we stretched him out and you could see the difference.”
The El Camino Real Derby also was 11⁄8 miles, and Metaboss sat comfortably in eighth place in the field of 10 early while Indianaughty, Ernest Shackleton and 19-to-10 favorite Conquest Typhoon dueled for the lead on a pace that began slowly but picked up considerably on the backstretch.
Metaboss began his move on the second turn, then swung very wide for the stretch run while still in eighth place. Once he straightened, he gained ground with every stride, moving within a length of the lead at the eighth pole and then quickly taking command.
“I just wanted to save some ground and be patient,” winning jockey Alex Solis said. “At the half-mile pole I asked him a little bit and he kicked on right away, so I grabbed him and said, ‘Whoa, whoa.’ I waited until the five-sixteenths pole to ask him again and he caught them quickly and kept opening up.”
Metaboss finished in 1 minute, 49.92 seconds — just 0.38 off the track record set by De- lightful Kiss in 2008 — and paid $15.20 as the fourth betting choice. California Derby winner Cross the Line finished well on the rail for second, a neck ahead of two-time graded stakes winner Conquest Typhoon.
“Since there was no pace, I thought I’d try to pull something different,” jockey Mike Smith said of Conquest Typhoon, who rallied from last place to win his previous start Nov. 30 at Del Mar. “I thought, when something is this easy you can’t take it away. The winner is a nice horse. I was never going to beat him, but if my horse wasn’t coming off of a layoff, I think I could have held on for second.”
The win thrusts Metaboss into the Kentucky Derby conversation, even though his wins have come on turf and synthetic and the Derby is run on dirt.
“When you’ve got a 3-yearold, you’re hoping you can make it to the Kentucky Derby,” Bonde said. “There are a lot of stepping stones on the way. I’ll talk to the owners and we’ll look at it a lot closer this week where to go from here. I don’t see dirt as a problem because he’s trained very well on it at Santa Anita.”
Oh, and the Kentucky Derby is 1¼ miles long.
“The way he runs, he just might like 1¼ miles,” Solis said. “Then we’ll be in business.” Coming Monday: Undefeated Exit Stage Left makes his comeback from injury in Monday’s $50,000-added Lost in the Fog Stakes at Golden Gate Fields. Exit Stage Left, whose three wins all came in stakes, hasn’t raced since the 2014 California Derby 13 months ago.