Streaking Mo Forza has Pegasus World Cup as ‘first option’
Peter Miller, who counts among the horses he’s conditioned the 2018 champion Stormy Liberal, on Saturday called Mo Forza the best turf horse he has ever trained.
That statement will face a test when the Mathis Brothers Mile (G2) hero — now on a four-race winning streak — gives the Grade 1, $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf a try.
“If everything is going well,” Miller said after Mo Forza’s most-recent victory, the Pegasus is expected to be the colt’s “first option.” The 1 3/16-mile race no longer has an entry fee and, as with its Jan. 25 dirt counterpart at Gulfstream Park, is a medication-free event.
“With no Lasix the horse (has) never been a bleeder, and so I don’t see any reason why the Pegasus wouldn’t be our next option,” Miller said.
A son of Uncle Mo, the Bardy Farm homebred took six starts to break his maiden. Since graduating on Sept. 29 at Santa Anita Park, he has rattled off victories in the Twilight Derby (G2) on Breeders’ Cup weekend, Hollywood Derby (G1) at Del Mar and now the Mathis Brothers Mile.
On Saturday, he took an outside trip under Joel Rosario to score in the last of seven stakes on a blockbuster card at Santa Anita. With a three-wide move off the turn, Mo Forza took command and inched away to a 1 1/4-length win over Originaire, with familiar rival Neptune’s Storm another length back.
Barry Abrams, a former trainer who has dealt with his share of health issues, is part of the colt’s ownership group. Rosario noted that when he arrived on the southern California circuit, “He was the first one who gave me a winner here, so it’s very special for me to give him another.”
“I thought we’d be sitting a couple lengths off the pace in third or fourth,” Miller said, “and there we were in the back of the pack and five wide, and I’m going ‘Oh Geez, I don’t know about this.’ But the pace was hot, and Joel knows what he’s doing, so everything worked out.
“(Mo Forza’s) like big kid that finally learns to use his feet and hands and it’s all over. He always had the talent, but he never really could put it all together. I think we haven’t seen the best of him yet. He is just starting to learn, and once he relaxes a little bit better and doesn’t want to lay in when he passes that last horse, I think the sky is the limit.
“He’s just a tremendous horse.”