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by Gary Quill

Whatever Senior Investment does in Saturday’s Grade 1 Preakness Stakes, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll end up in the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Stakes three weeks later.

“I think he wants a mile-and-a-half,” says trainer Ken McPeek. “The more distance, the better.”

In the meantime, though, there’s the small matter of 1 3/16-mile Preakness, offering a gaudy, $1.5 million purse and the cache of an American classic race.

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“He’s a nice horse, and I think he’s deserving of the opportunity,” McPeek says of the son of Discreetly Mine. “Timing is everything.”

Senior Investment, whom McPeek purchased out of the 2015 Keeneland September Yearling Sale for Fern Circle Stables, owns three wins and $207,080 in purse earnings in his eight-race career. In his last start, in the Grade 3 Lexington Stakes at Keeneland, Senior Investment stormed home from the rear of the field to be up in time by a head.

It was his first career stakes win.

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McPeek would have loved for his charge to run in the Kentucky Derby, but that was not to be.

“I think he’s a horse who would have relished the mile-and-a-quarter Derby, but he didn’t have enough points to get in,” McPeek said.

But, he added, that “was fortuitous because it gave me extra time to come into this race.”

He’ll need to take a big step forward to compete in the Preakness. All but one of his expected rivals have recorded better speed figures than his career-best 93 BRISnet figure.

But McPeek thinks Senior Investment is comparable at this stage to the two runners he’s trained to fourth-place Preakness efforts, Harlan’s Holiday and Racecar Rhapsody.

In any case, it’s worth a crack.

“You tee ’em up, you get ’em ready, and you find out,” the trainer said.

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