Woodford Racing's Timeline continued his ascent in the 3-year-old ranks May 13 at Belmont Park with a commanding victory in the $200,000 Peter Pan Stakes (G3).
Following a debut win at Gulfstream Park in March, the Hard Spun colt has stretched out and stepped up in class in each of his following starts. In April he took an Aqueduct Racetrack allowance at a mile by 13 1/2 lengths, then built upon that with a 3 1/2-length score in the 1 1/8-mile Peter Pan.
Under the guidance of jockey Javier Castellano, Timeline broke well from post 2, but quickly moved to the outside to track early pacesetter Meantime. Timeline maintained his outside position in the far turn, but angled to the inside as Meantime got out into the five-path exiting the bend.
"He's a really nice horse and the way he did it today was amazing," Castellano said. "This kind of horse is very straight forward. All you have to do is push a button and he goes forward."
The two briefly dueled in the stretch, but Meantime was no match late after he set fractions of :24.02, :47.68, and 1:12.99 on a sloppy, sealed main track. Timeline took over to run a mile in 1:38.37 and hit the wire in 1:51.62.
"I thought it was a good move at the time, because of where the other jockey (Jose Ortiz, aboard Meantime) was attempting to put Timeline way in the center of the track and I didn't want to see him out there," winning trainer Chad Brown said of the move inside. "I figured that was a good move. Let's see what he's got. It's seemed like in earlier races, on the rail and on the lead was good. It looked like as good of footing as you could find today was right there."
Timeline, bred in Kentucky by Alexander, Groves, and Matz, was a $500,000 purchase from Gainesway's consignment to the 2015 Keeneland September yearling sale. He now has $183,000 in earnings to go with his unblemished three-for-three record. He paid $2.90, $2.30, and $2.10, while Meantime brought $4.20 and $2.70. Impressive Edge came in another 1 1/2 lengths back to finish third, worth $3.30. He was followed home by Take Your Guns, Master Plan, and Lookin At Blessing.
"I'll speak to Bill Farish, who manages this horse, and we'll go from there. We had spoken earlier in the day that if we had some success here, the Haskell (G1) is a race that we have a lot of interest in, with maybe one race between now and then," Brown said of the colt's near future. "He doesn't strike me as a mile-and-a-half horse, but I'm not going to declare him out of the (Belmont Stakes). I'll discuss that with Mr. Farish, but that wasn't really my plan going in here. We're still in the developmental stage with this horse."
