Flightline lives up to hype with blowout win in Pacific Classic

Del Mar, Calif.

Can Flightline get a mile-and-a-quarter? Can he ever.

Can he get two turns? By the time he was into the second one, the crowd was roaring like it was hailing a champion.

Flightline did not just act the part Saturday afternoon. He lived it in the Grade 1, $1 million Pacific Classic at Del Mar.

He ran his record to 5-for-5 by destroying a field that included two other Grade 1 winners, winning by 19 1/4 lengths.

Not just winning. On an 88-degree afternoon, he scorched five opponents who were so far behind, they might as well have been running the next race.

“It’s a thrill,” winning trainer John Sadler said. “It’s been my lifelong dream to have a horse like this, so I’m really grateful.”

It was supposed to be the toughest challenge for the 4-year-old Tapit colt owned by Hronis Racing, Siena Farm, Summer Wind Equine, West Point Thoroughbreds and Woodford Racing – and adopted by a growing legion of fans. Instead, Flightline (3-10) delivered as an odds-on favorite for the fifth time, completing the 1 1/4 miles in 1:59.28, only 0.17 seconds off the track and stakes record set in 2003 by Candy Ride.

“This is the best day I’ve ever had here,” said Joe Harper, the Del Mar CEO who has worked at the track for 45 years. “From watching this horse last year here in his second race and seeing him then, everybody was left with their mouth open.”

Country Grammer (7-2), the second choice who came into the race with $10,897,320 in earnings, was clocked at 2:02.73 to finish second. That was 2.24 seconds faster than his winning time in the 1 1/4-mile Dubai World Cup (G1) in March – but not even in the same area code Saturday.

“I think he thinks he won,” Country Grammer’s trainer Bob Baffert said. “He ran a very game race. … I’ve seen a lot of ‘wows’ down here, and that was one of them. (Flightline) was spectacular. He’d been training that way. I had to stand up and cheer and clap for him.”

Breaking from post 5, jockey Flavien Prat moved Flightline forward early. Extra Hope (49-1), who started from the rail and eventually finished fifth, went head to head early with Flightline, who went the first quarter-mile in 23.42 seconds. Extra Hope kept pace and even held the lead through a 46.06-second half-mile. Then Flightline moved in front, opening a one-length lead through the first six furlongs that were timed at 1:09.97.

Then the opening became a chasm. Extra Hope faded, and Flightline ran off by himself. He was 10 lengths ahead through a 1:34.47 mile. By the time he crossed the finish line, 12,077 sunbaked fans were in a full-throated shout that they repeated when he and Prat returned to the winner’s circle.

Country Grammer finished two lengths ahead of third-place Royal Ship (10-1), Extra Hope’s stablemate who was headstrong and on his toes in the paddock before the race.

“When you’ve got horses like we’ve got, you’ve got to try it,” Royal Ship and Extra Hope’s trainer Richard Mandella said. “So we did that, and we ran third and fifth.”

Express Train (12-1), who won this year’s Santa Anita Handicap (G1), finished fourth followed by Extra Hope and finally Stilleto Boy (33-1). The 11-race card attracted an all-sources handle of $27,825,223.73, the sixth highest single day in Del Mar history.

If there was one picture of blissful calm after the race, it was Sadler. Even though the victory was by the widest margin in Flightline’s career, it also was the fourth by double-digit lengths. So Sadler said he was not surprised.

“You’ve just got to watch him run,” he said. “Sometimes the people are saying can he go? I mean, come on. He’s never been challenged.”

As Flightline opened the huge lead and the crowd was shouting and it was just a matter of Prat staying in the irons, Sadler admitted he was all but into his walk to the winner’s circle.

“I was feeling good,” he said. “I said do I watch him to the finish? Or do I head down the stairs? I said I’ll watch him finish. … “Remember, this was just his fifth race. That’s what makes it so special.”

Flightline returned $2.60 on a $2 wager. 

For a horse who got a late start to his career after an accidental gash to his hip as a 2-year-old and who missed a start this year because of a sore hock, Flightline may be the least experienced horse to be favored in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. In the current pari-mutuel futures wager that has two days to go, he shortened to 9-5 by 10 p.m. EDT Saturday.

Not for nothing, but Saturday’s race was a win-and-you’re-in qualifier for the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Had Flightline lost – an idea that seems preposterous now – he might have had to go into the Awesome Again (G1) on Oct. 1 at Santa Anita to qualify for the $6 million, 1 1/4-mile race at Keeneland on Nov. 5.

Now there will be no such port of call.

“The plan now is the Breeders’ Cup,” Sadler said. “He won’t run before the Breeders’ Cup. He’ll run in Kentucky.”

There he will face his toughest test yet. Then again, that was the same thing that was said before this weekend. That was before he proved he could go 1 1/4 miles. But it was after Sadler thought he could.

“We’ve always said that our mantra is in John Sadler we trust,” lead owner Kosta Hronis said. “Today you saw all the effort that was put in by him and his team. … For them to train him to go a mile-and-a-quarter, I’m not sure that’s a very popular thing to do. But John knew the right thing to do with this horse.”