Morethanawarning Relishes Route of Ground

Given that Morethanawarning is a granddaughter of 1983 Belmont Stakes winner Caveat out of Catch a Warning, whose two career victories came at 1 3/8 and 1 1/16 miles on the turf, it's not surprising that she would relish a distance of ground. The filly lived up to those expectations in her second start when she came from eighth off slow early fractions of 25.05 and 50.41 to prevail by three-quarters of a length going 1 1/16 miles on September 13 at Belmont.

"I was actually pretty torn about whether or not to run her long first time out," said trainer Tom Bush of Morethanawarning, who was third in a 5 ½-furlong maiden at Saratoga in her debut. "I knew she wanted more ground, but she's not a big, robust, heavy filly and I was worried about getting to the bottom of her first time. I thought it was best to sprint her, and who knows whether it was the right thing to do. She had a very light work 23 days between races, and she didn't get tired that's for sure. I think the race probably helped her a little bit, conditioning-wise, and clearly the filly is bred for distance. We're hoping that's going to pay off."

Sunday, Morethanawarning is 10-1 in the 12-horse field (11 betting interests) for the 1 1/16-mile Miss Grillo, and Bush is confident the filly will continue her forward progress.

"She was pretty difficult early in the summer," said Bush. "We had a hard time keeping her settled. She was a little too anxious the first part of her works; she kept wanting to do too much. It took us a good long time to talk her out of that, but she's coming around really well. She even had to be talked a little bit out of it by Cornelio [Velasquez] when she ran [last time out]; the slow pace compounded that, but I don't think we'll have to worry about that in this race."