Pat On the Back garnered his fourth stakes win and surpassed the half-million dollar mark in career earnings on July 13 when the 4-year-old Congrats colt scored a 1 3/4-length victory in the $100,000 Saginaw S. at Belmont Park.
After a pair of hard-luck seconds in stakes in his previous two outings, including the one-mile Commentator S. on May 28, Pat On the Back found the Saginaw’s extra sixteenth of a mile to his liking. After a spirited three-way duel for the first six furlongs, Pat On the Back began to get the best of Hit It Once More and Wine Not in mid-stretch to pull clear in the final furlong, getting the distance in 1:41.73 on a fast main track.
“He’s just a fighter,” jockey Dylan Davis said of the winner. “He does everything great. I just wanted him to ride his own race. He can get speedy. I thought I was going to have the pace up front, but I let them go have it. [T]here was no worry; he was fighting the good fight.”
Owned by Harold Lerner, AWC Stables and Nehoc Stables, Pat On the Back upped his record to 5-3-4 in 19 and his earnings to $534,282.
Bred by Sugar Maple Farm, Pat On the Back was a $70,000 purchase at the 2015 Fasig-Tipton New York Preferred sale.
Pat On the Back is one of Congrats’ six stakes horses in 2018. The WinStar stallion is once again among the leading sires of winners this year, with 92 to date.
