Nations Pride delivers as favorite in Arlington Million

New Kent, Va.

On a day of giddy highs, like an endorsement of racing from the Virginia governor, and heart-sinking lows, like a horse suffering what proved to be a fatal injury in the middle of the card, it was left to a reliable, old, track fixture to punctuate Arlington Million day Sunday.

Nowadays it feels like 5 is old for a racehorse, especially an entire who might otherwise be siring future champions.

Nations Pride one day will have his time as a stallion. But he just keeps delivering for his breeder-owner Godolphin and for his trainer Charlie Appleby, who was not at Colonial Downs to see the son of Teofilo do what he had done nine times before.

He raced off the pace, which was soft, on the lush turf course, which was firm. He used his turn of foot rounding for home, he took the lead inside the final furlong, and he won the 41st edition of the Grade 1 Arlington Million.

“Look, he was the best horse in the race, and we knew that,” winning jockey William Buick said as he was rushing to catch a flight out of Washington about two hours later. He would have been better off taking the horse.

Bettors who made Nations Pride (1-1) the heavy favorite in the Million’s smallest-ever field of six might look askance at that business about his being reliable. This was a horse, after all, who had not won in his three races since last year’s Canadian International (G1) victory.

After a third in the Man o’ War (G2) at Aqueduct and a second in the Manhattan (G1) at Saratoga, Nations Pride was reunited Sunday with jockey William Buick. In the 12 times they have been paired, they have won seven races and hit the board two other times.

“Actually at Saratoga last Friday, I got to ride him for a breeze on the Oklahoma track,” Buick said, “so I knew he was coming here in great form, and he really impressed me. He’s an exciting horse, and he’s won four Grade 1s now.”

And with Sunday’s $613,800 first-place money, he has won $3,445,867.

Like so many of Nation’s Pride’s previous wins, he conceded early ground. So did everyone except long-shot Sugoi (19-1), who made like a prototypical rabbit. He ran off to as much as a seven-length lead, but his early fractions of 24.12, 50.03, 1:14.27 and 1:38.94 were ho-hum.

Nations Pride was as far as 8 1/2 lengths back in third, but Sugoi’s stride shortened, and the gap shrunk. Talk of the Nation (8-1) inherited the lead with two furlongs left in the 1 1/4-mile race, but that lasted only until Nations Pride caught him inside the eighth pole.

“The leader (Sugoi) was getting a lot of rope, and he was getting it cheap,” Buick said, “so I just wanted to have everything covered as well as I could.”

Picking up steam through the stretch, Nations Pride was not all by himself. Integration (6-5) was making up ground, too.

“My horse put me in (a good) spot the whole way,” Integration’s jockey Kendrick Carmouche said. “Every time I asked him, he was there. It’s just that a horse quicker and faster than him got away from him. I think with the horse on the lead being so away from us, it’s a different scenario that you’ve got to put yourself in to finish up the last part. I thought he did well. I think he ran a monster race today.”

Nations Pride edged away to win by 1 3/4 lengths over Integration with a time of 2:01.96. Ancient Rome (7-1) came from last to finish another half-length back in third.

“We predicted with the other horse who’s won at over a mile-and-a-half that he would go forward and have the lead,” Ancient Rome’s rider Jamie Spencer said about Sugoi. “The pace was very slow, and that was no good for my horse.”

Talk of the Nation, Sugoi and Highland Chief (32-1) finished fourth through sixth in that order.

Nations Pride paid $4.00, $2.20 and $2.10; Integration $2.60 and $2.10; and Ancient Rome $2.60.

Even with the short field and despite a 52-minute delay brought on when the simulcast feed failed at the start of the card, the Million was a triumph of man over Mother Nature. Or maybe a sidestepping. Because the card was postponed from Saturday to Sunday, the big turf course was given a chance to dry out from the bucketing rain Thursday and Friday, courtesy of tropical storm Debby.

“It's a beautiful turf course,” Buick said. “This track is world class. The ground is beautiful. It's a very fair track from what I could gather. Obviously, there are some very big races here now.”

Earlier Saturday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Colonial Downs would host a new spring meet in 2025 with the Virginia Derby on March 15 serving as a Kentucky Derby prep.

The excitement over Youngkin’s announcement was offset later by the breakdown of 6-year-old mare Medalla Match, who was euthanized after fracturing the fetlock in her left-front leg late in the Andy Guest Stakes.

It was an odd day of ambivalence that had some wags on social media suggesting it was the curse of Arlington Park, the former home of the Million that was leveled by a wrecking ball after Churchill Downs Inc. sold it to the Chicago Bears.

As day turned to night, the traditional champagne toast created by the late Arlington patriarch Richard Duchossois was held in a room set up to celebrate the winners of the Million. But with Buick on the way to a flight he could not catch, and with Appleby presumably back in England fast asleep after watching the race, and with his assistant Nikki Jones focused on getting Nations Pride back to the barn, none of the winners showed up to get their bubbly cheers.

The rebuilding of the Million in Virginia, then, has only just begun.