Fallout Fires to Equal Stakes Record in Metro Pace
MILTON, September 21, 2024— Elimination winner Fallout forged first-over glory in the $1,000,000 Metro Pace final, delivering as the 8-5 second choice to equal the stakes and track record on Saturday night at Woodbine Mohawk Park.
Blue Onyx blasted out of post 9 for the front and cleared after the first eighth, though he quickly faced attacks from Prince Hal Hanover and then Captain Optimistic through a :26.2 first quarter. Prince Hal Hanover swept to the lead and Captain Optimistic, the 6-5 favourite, soon shot forward and seized the helm as the field began to stretch to a :54.4 half.
Driver Tim Tetrick had Fallout off the pylons moving up the backstretch, but never flushed a helmet to follow. So Tetrick sent Fallout forward on the rim and came looming after battle-weary leaders as they scurried by three-quarters in 1:22.1. Captain Optimistic clung to a diminishing lead once Prince Hal Hanover pulled pocket to assault, all the while Fallout continued to gain to the center of the track. Fallout reached the wheels of Prince Hal Hanover nearing the final eighth and sprung into another gear to slide by Prince Hal Hanover and win by just over a length. Captain Optimistic settled for third and Swingtown rallied from third over for fourth.
“I was just kind of playing the race, and then I could see they were gonna’ play some chess early,” Tetrick said after the race. “Yannick still got a pretty easy first half. But you know, this colt just kept coming and digging, and we kept having a helmet to follow. When it mattered he got to the wire first.”
A colt by 2012 Metro Pace winner Captaintreacherous, Fallout won his third race from eight starts and has now earned $590,783 for owners Robert LeBlanc, Pryde Stables, Inc. and Caviart Farms. Tony Alagna trains the Brittany Farms-bred colt to add a fourth Metro Pace trophy to his mantel. He won with Captaintreacherous and then in 2014 with Artspeak and in 2020 with Exploit.
“This horse showed that he had the ability. It just looked like he was going to take a couple starts for him to get really fit and really into it,” Tony Alagna said after the race. “We took him to Kentucky, we raced him down there twice or three times, and it looked like he was going to be [in] tough down there so we thought, ‘You know what? We have good luck in Canada. Let's take him to Metro and see what happens.’ And he just exploded up here. You know, he's been lights out both weeks.
“I thought the way Timmy raced him was going to get the miles in him that he needed to come up here,” Alagna also said. “I think probably one of the biggest changes coming up here, we changed his bridal from Lexington to here, and we changed him to aluminum shoes. And, you know, aluminum shoes on the Lexington surface is kind of a 50/50, thing. But we know what they can do to a horse up here in Canada, and we made a decision to come up here. I said, ‘Okay, it's time to switch him to aluminum,’ so that really cleaned up his gate and I think that's kind of what put him over the top.”
Fallout, besting his 1:49.3 lifetime-best performance in his Metro Pace elimination, equaled the 1:49.1 stakes record established by Tall Dark Stranger in 2019 as well as the track record set in 2011 by A Rocknroll Dance. The mile was one-fifth of a second off the Canadian record set in 2011 by Sweet Lou.
Fallout paid $5.30 to win.
By Ray Cotolo, for Woodbine Communications
