Rain does not deter 6 shippers racing on Arlington Million day

New Kent, Va.

With a strong, free-standing fan blowing on his stall in the cavernous receiving barn at Colonial Downs, Nations Pride did not appear Friday to be fussed by the 24-hour postponement of what is now Sunday’s Grade 1 Arlington Million. Neither did human handlers looking after the 8-5 morning-line favorite.

“Not really. We just sort of sat tight and waited,” said Nikki Jones, who led three members of trainer Charlie Appleby’s team on a long drive from upstate New York that ended before dawn Friday in eastern Virginia. “Always was going to travel on Thursday evening from Saratoga. We traveled through the night. Left at 7:30 ... and arrived here at 5 a.m.”

Other than a downpour during the drive through Washington, Jones said the trip was otherwise smooth for Nations Pride and his stablemate Mischief Magic, the 5-2 program favorite Sunday in the $150,000 Van Clief Stakes for turf sprinters.

The story was much the same Friday for five other shippers from in and out of the U.S. as Arlington Million day moves toward reclaiming its old Chicagoland international prestige in its second year at Colonial. The momentum continued to build this week despite a one-day postponement to wait out the intrusion of tropical storm Debby.

“It was about 11 hours from Churchill Downs,” said Violet Barton, a U.K.-based exercise rider for trainer Charlie Hills who traveled with Million contender Ancient Rome. “It’s a long journey. I was asleep for most of it.”

Ancient Rome, whose last win came 11 months ago in the Mint Millions (G3) at Kentucky Downs, is four weeks past his second-place finish back home in the Summer Mile (G2) at Ascot. He looked quite docile Friday morning, less than two hours after he arrived with Barton.

“He ran really well,” Barton said of that last race. “He did get a bit of days relaxing. I did a bit of a breeze, a swing canter on Wednesday at Churchill Downs and kind of give him a bit more of a stretch of about a mile.”

Moira, the 2022 Canada champion who is the 9-5 favorite in the $500,000 Beverly D. (G2), arrived Friday at 7:30 p.m. EDT from her nearly 12-hour trailer ride from Woodbine in Canada. Trainer Kevin Attard decided at the 11th hour to send the 5-year-old mare south rather than stay home and try for a repeat victory in the US$145,681 Canadian Stakes (G2).

It might not have involved international borders, but Saffie Joseph Jr. shipped Beverly D. entrant Libban more than 500 miles from Saratoga, where Debby also made it a challenging week for scheduling races and training.

“It hasn’t been ideal,” said Anastasia Zemtsov, who is based at Woodbine and is Joseph’s eyes and ears on this trip. “The horses that we have here, they’ve gone out, they’ve seen the track, they’ve jogged.”

They include Secretariat Stakes hopeful General Ledger, who arrived Tuesday with exercise rider Olaf Hernández from Florida.

“This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to deal with (General Ledger), and he’s wonderful,” Zemtsov said. “He’s so classy to deal with. He’s great on the track. He walks out like a professional. He’s done everything right here so far.”

As Zemtsov spoke, she held Libban by the rein outside a barn stall. The 4-year-old winner of the $125,000 Wasted Tears Stakes on June 29 at Lone Star was generally calm and curious but occasionally antsy to do anything but just stand around.

The late arrivals are expected to get their first looks at the track with their morning exercise Saturday, when the National Weather Service predicted the sky would be mostly sunny with a 20 percent chance of an afternoon shower or thunderstorm. Race day Sunday is forecast to be clear with a high near 84 degrees. Given the drying out the turf needs after two days of off-and-on rain, it is more likely the exercise will be done on the main track.

“We’ll probably just take them out on the track and have a jog and a half-cantor,” Jones said of Nations Pride and Mischief Magic. “They’ll exercise on the dirt all the way around to stretch their legs.”

Even though Appleby has successfully established a permanent string of horses at Saratoga with assistant Chris Connett, he still shuttles back and forth between races in Europe and North America. Jones has racked up the transoceanic air miles, too.

“We’ve got horses over here, and we’ve got horses over there,” Jones said. “We’re still busy over there doing plenty.”

As for how Nations Pride will handle race day and 1 1/4 miles of a turf course whose condition is subject to the continuing whims of Mother Nature, Jones was matter-of-factly confident that the runner-up in the June 8 Manhattan (G1) at Saratoga would be just fine on anything from firm to soft going.

“Nations, he’s won on soft ground before,” she said, referring to top-level victories last year in Germany and Canada. “He won’t mind the ground.”

So many Europe-based horses like Nations Pride are adept at running on the softest of turf courses even as so many U.S.-based humans cannot figure out how to make that happen. The very conditions that forced Colonial to postpone Million day are no big deal back in England, where they go right ahead and race.

Asked why that is, Jones laughed and merely said, “Drainage.”