McGaughey has Arlington Million two-for-one

Defending champ Fort Washington, tough Integration seek title

The stablemates have traveled different paths to Saturday’s $1 million test, but they arrive with the same objective: give McGaughey another Arlington Million trophy. The 1 1/4-mile, $1 million contest is the 11th race on Saturday’s stacked card at Colonial Downs.

Magic Cap Stables’ Fort Washington accomplished that mission a year ago with a sweeping rally from last to first, edging Grand Sonata while Integration settled for third after leading late. Since then, Fort Washington has added the Grade 3 Dinner Party Stakes at Laurel Park to his résumé, his second straight triumph in that contest.

McGaughey sees little reason to dwell on Fort Washington’s most recent start, a seventh-place finish in the Wise Dan Stakes at Churchill Downs.

“Well, he’s been a consistent horse, and always really his only two races that weren’t that good were at Churchill Downs on kind of a soft turf,” McGaughey said on the July 25 episode of Off to the Races Radio. “I was debating whether to run him, but he was already there, so I ran him the last time.”

Instead, he points to races that better reflect the horse’s form.

“His race in the Pegasus Turf was really good,” McGaughey said. “He had the outside post that probably cost him a placing, and the Dinner Party he ran really well in. He seems to have trained good since we got back [to McGaughey’s Saratoga base].”

If Fort Washington is trying to prove last year’s victory was no fluke, West Point Thoroughbreds and Woodford Racing LLC’s Integration is chasing something that has eluded him despite establishing himself among the country’s elite turf horses.

The 6-year-old has earned nearly $1.85 million while finishing second in the Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational, the Maker’s Mark Mile, the Manhattan, and last year’s Arlington Million. He’s finished second or third in six Grade 1 events, and every performance has strengthened his reputation. None has delivered the Grade 1 victory his connections covet.

Following a fifth-place finish in this year’s Manhattan, McGaughey chose patience.

“When he came back the track was just too hard and fast for him that day,” he said. “So I decided, well, I’ll just give him a little bit of a leeway here, and we’ve given him time.”

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The freshening has gone according to plan, and McGaughey believes Integration deserves another opportunity on one of the sport’s biggest stages.

“His works have been good since, his last two or three works, and he’s never won a Grade 1,” McGaughey said. “We want to give him every opportunity we can to try to win one.”

Integration is certainly proven over the course. He won at first asking at Colonial in 2023 and then took the Grade 3 Virginia Derby in just his second career start. In all he has three wins, a second, and a third from five trips over the local sod.

“I enjoy Colonial,” McGaughey said. “I’ve never been there, but you know, we have had some luck there, and I think it gives us a a bit of an outlet from here, as Laurel did.”

Fort Washington is 5-1 on the morning line, while Integration is 4-1 in a competitive renewal of the Million. Burnham Square, a winner of three straight, is the 5-2 morning line favorite.

For McGaughey, the challenge, and the luxury, is that only one of his accomplished stablemates can be first under the wire.

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