Zipse: Belmont gets better with Peter Pan winner Hill Road

Next month’s $2 million Belmont Stakes at Saratoga just got a little more interesting.

Sprinting home on the wrong lead, Hill Road broke the hearts of his competition in the final strides of Saturday’s Grade 3 Peter Pan Stakes and announced himself a contender for the final leg of the Triple Crown.

The Rick Dutrow pair of McAfee and Captain Cook looked home free well into the stretch of New York’s prep for the Belmont. It seemed only a matter of which one would win the nine-furlong affair at Aqueduct.

Belmont at Big A: Hill Road rallies to win Peter Pan.

Hill Road and rider Flavien Prat were just getting going, however.

Gobbling up ground with each and every stride, the son of Quality Road inhaled the leaders in the final yards and went on to win by three-quarters of a length. The 2-1 second choice in the betting completed the 1 1/8 miles of the Peter Pan with a solid time of 1:49.22.

Having finished third in each of his first two starts in the United States, Hill Road had shown promise, but it was still difficult to tell just how good he was. Perhaps we still don’t know, considering the horses he defeated in the Peter Pan are not world beaters, but clearly his stock is rising.

The Peter Pan was only his second start for trainer Chad Brown after originally being conditioned by Adrian Murray in his first two runs overseas as well as the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last year at Del Mar. Saturday’s victory also was his longest race to date and gave the impression of a colt who wants to go even farther.

As for the winning rider, Prat looks to have a very interesting decision to make. It would be hard to get off Baeza after the lightly raced colt finished so strongly in his third-place effort in the Kentucky Derby. The Eclipse Award-winning jockey often rides for Brown, however, and Hill Road showed enough in the Peter Pan to make the choice anything but a slam dunk.

Baeza and Hill Road have run five times each and began their careers on the grass. Each is improving and most recently finished with a flourish despite running greenly. Whomever Prat chooses, that colt must be considered a real threat in the final leg of the Triple Crown.

In the Peter Pan, Hill Road got a solid pace to run at for the first time in his three American starts. In both the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and this winter’s Tampa Bay Derby (G3), the front-runners were allowed to cruise along on the lead with very little pressure. Saturday the colt who started his career with a win on the turf in Ireland got a little more help to set up his late run.

Making the performance all that more impressive, Aqueduct’s main track has not exactly been playing kindly to deep closers. Hill Road stumbled a bit out of the gate and still had plenty of ground to make up in mid-stretch. Just imagine if he had smoothly changed leads at the head of the stretch.

Much like I felt about Baeza after the Kentucky Derby, Hill Road is a colt who still is learning and seems to have another level or two to get to before maximizing his potential. Have I mentioned Prat has a very interesting decision to make in the coming weeks before the Belmont?

His impressive performance to win the Peter Pan also makes me wonder what might have been had Hill Road not been forced to scratch out of the Wood Memorial (G2) due to a fever. The fast early pace of the Kentucky Derby likely would have been very much to his liking if he had been given the opportunity.

Sovereignty, the Kentucky Derby winner, and Journalism, the beaten favorite and runner-up, both ran outstanding races from off the pace on the first Saturday in May. They remain the top two sophomore males in the nation, but there still is plenty of intriguing competition to that pecking order.

The wonderfully bred Baeza ran an outstanding race at Churchill Downs, and now we can add the name Hill Road to the list of serious contenders moving forward.

With a pedigree to appreciate the stretch out to 10 furlongs, the Brown charge still needs to prove himself against the best 3-year-olds in the land. Sovereignty, Journalism and Baeza are far better than what he faced in the Peter Pan.

After Saturday’s performance at the Big A, Hill Road earned the opportunity and will be in with a shot in what could be a very interesting Belmont Stakes.