Up With the Birds rallied from the back of the pack to take Saturday’s $250,000 Coronation Futurity at Woodbine.
The Sam-Son Farms homebred, trained by Malcolm Pierce and ridden by Eurico Rosa da Silva, was steered with great confidence from sixth, and last, position, prevailing under a hand ride in the 1 1/8-mile event.
Bookies Nightmare took the field through opening splits of :23.83 and :48.01 with Star Contender and Kitten Candy in close proximity. Star Contender, urged into contention by Patrick Husbands, commanded the lead through the far turn as da Silva asked Up With the Birds for more.
Up With the Birds, in full flight, took the lead at the top of the lane and never looked back to score by 3 1/2-lengths in a final running time of 1:51.13. Star Contender held on for second in front of His Race to Win.
Da Silva was full of praise for the strong conditioning job by Pierce to ready the colt for his first added-money score.
“He (Pierce) had a lot of patience with this horse,” said da Silva. “We’ve been educating this horse for a long time. Malcolm took his time and today it paid off. He (Up With the Birds) did today, everything he had learned in the morning already. I had a lot of confidence in this horse today.”
Pierce, who also saddled third-place finisher His Race to Win for the same connections, is cautiously optimistic Up With the Birds will continue to improve with an eye to next year’s Queen’s Plate.
“I hope next June or July he can go a mile and a quarter, but there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge between now and then,” grinned Pierce
Up With the Birds banked $150,000 in victory, while improving his record to two wins and a third from three starts.
He paid $4.30, $2.20 and $2.90, combining with Star Contender ($2.20, $2.10) for an $8.10 (6-5) exactor. A 6-5-1 (His Race to Win, $2.70 to show) triactor was worth $22.60.
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