Engage, who showed brilliant signs of potential as a two-year-old, will return to the races on Saturday in the Grade III, Bay Shore Stakes, at Aqueduct Racetrack. The seven-furlong dash will be the first race for Engage in six months, and if he comes back the same way he was before his layoff, there is a very real chance that he will end up right back in the winner's circle.
Engage has shown shades of promise from the very start. As a two-year-old, he ran a very game second in his debut at Saratoga. In his second start, he tracked the pacesetters in third place, and then made a devastating move around the final turn that left his rivals floundering. Going wide into the stretch, Engage lengthened his stride and took off like a rocket, mercilessly shooting past the leaders. In a matter of seconds Engage swept up to take command. He drifted wide down the stretch, but his raw talent and blatant speed were enough to see him through. Engage soundly fended off the challenge of Impact Player and thundered over the wire by half a length.
After breaking his maiden, Engage set off to compete in his first stakes race. He entered the Grade III, Futurity Stakes at Belmont Park, where he showed the world just how special he might be. After tracking behind the leaders, Engage exploded into the stretch with the force of a freight train. With a breathtaking turn of foot, Engage swept by every single foe with startling ease, and left all his challengers behind in a cloud of dust. Making short work of his rivals, the nimble bay flashed away to win by almost four lengths. His final time for the six-furlong dash came in at the sharp time of 1:10.09, making his sublime performance all the more impressive.
Engage has been training very steadily at Palm Meadows Training Center in Florida, as he prepares for his three-year-old debut. However, the Bay Shore Stakes will be no walkover, as Engage is expected to face a quality field which includes the likes of, National Flag, an impressive allowance winner coming out of Gulfstream Park, A Different Style, winner of the Jimmy Winkfield Stakes, and the graded stakes placed, Aveenu Malcainu, just to name a few. Luckily for Engage, his past performances, latest workouts, and impressive bloodlines, tell us that the potential is still there for him.
A look into Engage's pedigree will tell you that he was bred to be fast. This nimble colt first entered my radar in 2016, when he went through the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. Engage is by Into Mischief, and out of the Speightstown mare, Nefertiti. At the time, Nefertiti had not produced a single winner. However, the combination of a Speightstown mare with a stallion of Into Mischief's caliber suggested that the colt would be blessed with speed, and as we all know by now, that colt really was. Engage sold for $200,000, but would later be sold again in the OBS March Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale in 2017. There, he would sell for a whopping $550,000, to Woodford Racing, LLC.
There is a lot to like about Engage as he sets off to begin his three-year-old campaign. As Engage has shown in the past, he is an athlete who possesses endless speed, a competitive drive, and a burning urge to win. If he returns to form, he has serious potential to make a lot of noise this season as a sprinter. This colt has done very little wrong throughout his brief career so far, and that makes him a very exciting prospect to follow as the year goes on.
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