Keeneland: Carl Spackler makes 2025 debut in Maker's Mark Mile

Winner of last fall’s Grade 2 Turf Mile (G1) at Keeneland, Carl Spackler headlines a field of nine entered next Friday for the 37th running of the $650,000 Maker’s Mark Mile (G1) for 4-year-olds and up on the grass.

The Maker’s Mark Mile will go as the ninth race on the 10-race program on with a 5:16 p.m. EDT post time. First post is 1 p.m.

Trained by Chad Brown, Carl Spackler will be making his 2025 debut in the Maker’s Mark Mile. In his last race, Carl Spackler was sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Del Mar.

Carl Spackler has seven wins, including five graded stakes, in 11 starts with earnings of $1,608,475. With a victory next week, he would join Wise Dan and Perfect Soul as the only horses to win the Turf Mile and come back the following spring to win the Maker’s Mark Mile.

Brown saddled Raging Bull to win the 2021 Maker’s Mark Mile.

Flavien Prat, who won the 2023 Maker’s Mark Mile on Chez Pierre, has the mount from post 6.

Trikari is the other Grade 1 winner in the field.

Trained by Graham Motion, who won the race in 2016 with the filly Miss Temple City, Trikari also will be making his 2025 debut. Winner of the Belmont Derby Invitational (G1) as well as the Secretariat (G2) and American Turf (G2) last year, Trikari will be ridden by John Velazquez from post 3.

Velazquez is a two-time race winner with Wise Dan in 2014 and Soviet Line in 1999.