McGaughey aims for first Arlington Million win with
Boisterous
“Shug” McGaughey has won many of the
sport’s top prizes including classic and Breeders’ Cup races, but the Hall of
Fame trainer would consider the Grade 1 Arlington Million as one of his crowning
achievements should Boisterous win on Saturday.
“I’m dating myself with this, but I was
there for the first one, and I think it’s a great race,” McGaughey said Tuesday.
“I was training at Arlington that summer and they said, ‘We’re going to run a
million-dollar race,’ and that was the craziest thing I ever heard. It would be
a nice race for me or anyone else to win.”
Boisterous will be a part of a busy
Saturday for Shug, who will be at Saratoga saddling Sea Island in the Grade 1
Alabama and Point of Entry in the Grade 1 Sword Dancer Invitational. The Sword
Dancer is also for turf males, and McGaughey said it has been his plan all along
to point the Phipps Stable homebreds — Boisterous and Point of Entry — to
different Grade 1 races this summer.
“I wanted to keep them separated but in
good company also,” McGaughey said. “Boisterous had a nice work (on Monday). He
seems to be coming into the race good; he’ll be a factor.”
Although McGaughey wants to keep
Boisterous and Point of Entry away from each other in the starting gate, he has
worked them together. The pair went five furlongs together in 1:00 2/5 on August
7 at Saratoga but they worked separately on Monday.
Boisterous has two wins from four starts
at the Million distance of 1 1/4 miles, and McGaughey said he would like new
jockey Jose Lezcano to have Boisterous closer to the pace than in the Grade 3
Arlington Handicap, where he 11 lengths behind through a half in :48 2/5.
Boisterous is McGaughey’s third Million
entrant, but he would only be the trainer’s second starter. McGaughey scratched
Lure in 1993 because of soft ground and saddled Good Reward to an eighth-place
finish in 2005 on yielding going.
“Lure was the morning-line favorite, but
he didn’t favor soft turf, and when I got there that day it had been raining as
hard as it could all day, so we had to scratch,” McGaughey said. “Good Reward
didn’t like the softer turf either, but Boisterous would like it. Soft would be
fine with us.”
The course is unlikely to be rated as
soft come Saturday afternoon, but forecasted rain for mid-week could give the
turf that “give” McGaughey wants.
“A little bit of give would help,”
McGaughey said. “It was hard in the (Grade 1) Manhattan, and (Boisterous)
finished fast, but he doesn’t have quite the same kick when it’s hard. It
doesn’t have to be soft, but we want a little bit of give.”
Boisterous arrives at Arlington on
Thursday.
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