Lambeth, Game Warden meet again in Listed $150K Birdstone

Top marathoners Lambeth and Game Warden, the respective 1-2 finishers in the Listed Temperence Hill in March at Oaklawn Park, will face off again in Wednesday’s Listed $150,000 Birdstone, a 1 3/4-mile marathon for older horses at Saratoga Race Course.

Carl R. Moore's Lambeth enters from a pacesetting fourth in the 1 3/8-mile Listed Chorleywood on June 14 at Churchill Downs, where he made his turf debut for trainer Joe Sharp. The 4-year-old chestnut son of Arrogate led through splits of 24.59 seconds, 49.46, 1:15.24 and 1:39.31 under Brian Hernandez, Jr. before losing the lead at the head of the lane and keeping on willingly to round out the superfecta.

Sharp said he was not disappointed by the effort and may try Lambeth over the lawn again in the future.

“I did always want to try him on turf, he handled it just fine, so after the Birdstone, there is a likelihood we will see him in a race at Kentucky Downs,” Sharp said of the racetrack where he tied for the training title last year.

Lambeth looms large in the compact field thanks to a 100 Beyer Speed Figure he earned for a dominant wire-to-wire victory in the 1 1/2-mile Temperence Hill. He led comfortably through each point of call with Game Warden chasing throughout and drew clear in the stretch to post the 3 1/2-length win in a final time of 2:31.88.

Sharp said he is confident Lambeth will handle the added quarter-mile as he faces his farthest test to date. 

“He’s doing really well. He’s obviously a horse that has shown he can get the mile and a half distance so I think the mile and three-quarters is in his wheelhouse,” Sharp said. “It seems like the farther he goes, the better he gets. He has been training really well up here.”

Sharp also noted that Lambeth runs his best races fresh as he enters with more than one month's rest since the Chorleywood.

“I think what we’ve learned about him is that because of the distances of his races and how hard he runs, spacing is very important for him,” Sharp said. “He puts 110 percent into every race, so he has to get himself back up under him again. I really like this spacing going into the Birdstone.”

A $135,000 purchase from last year’s Fasig-Tipton October Digital Sale, Lambeth holds a 12-4-0-1 record with $314,475 in total purse earnings.

Jose Ortiz picks up the mount from post 4.

Flying P Stable’s Game Warden [post 3, Ricardo Santana, Jr.] will attempt to turn the tables on Lambeth after chasing him the whole way in the Temperence Hill.

Trained by Norm Casse, the 5-year-old bay gelding has hit the board in both of his starts at marathon distances, adding a third in the 12-furlong Listed Isaac Murphy Marathon to his ledger last out on April 30 at Churchill Downs.

“The Temperence Hill was his best race for us, and the winner had a nice, easy lead and we couldn’t chase him down,” Casse said. “Then we ran him back in the race at Churchill and that wasn’t one of his better races, but that was more that we don’t think he likes Churchill that much.”

One track Game Warden does prefer is Saratoga, where his 2-for-3 record includes a pair of tidy allowance-level scores last summer, with both wins garnering what were then career-best 91 Beyers. He upped his career-high to 96 for his second in the Temperence Hill behind Lambeth, who runs at the Spa for the first time.

“He’s doing really well and I think the main thing with him is that he seems to really like Saratoga, so we have a little bit of an advantage going into it in that capacity,” Casse said. “I’d be much happier had we got a race into him before this, but the circumstances didn’t play out, so he’ll have to come in there fresh.”

Casse said the gap back to his last race is due to the limited availability of races Game Warden is eligible for.

“He’s been ready to run for a while now, there just hasn’t been anything,” Casse said. “He’s a tricky horse because he’s not eligible for a lot of things, so we had tried to get him in as main-track-only for fitness into this one, but it just didn’t play out.”

Game Warden was claimed by his current connections for $50,000 out of a nine-furlong win last May at Churchill. The son of Tapit, who is out of the winning Medaglia d’Oro mare Glory and Power and was a $400,000 yearling, has gone on to notch three victories to go with his two stakes placings since being claimed.

“He just seemed like a useful horse. We loved the pedigree and knew he was beautiful considering how much they paid for him as a yearling,” Casse said. “The main thing that we thought was that they hadn’t gelded him yet – we eventually did that and it made a huge difference. We’re excited for the rest of the year.”

The familiar foes will face a new rival in Pin Oak Stud’s Parchment Party [post 2, John Velazquez], who enters off an 8 1/2-length trouncing of an off-the-turf edition of the local Grade 3 Belmont Gold Cup going this distance over sloppy and sealed footing on June 6.

Trained by Hall of Famer Bill Mott, the 4-year-old Constitution colt earned his first stakes victory there, rallying from last-of-8 in the early stages to take over after 1 1/2 miles and draw off to the facile score in a final time of 2:57.86.

The $450,000 purchase at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale earned his first win in eight starts since a deep-closing optional claiming score in November 2023 at Churchill. Out of the winning Tiznow mare Life Well Lived, he is a half-brother to Grade 1-winner American Patriot and dual graded stakes-placed Muqtaser, as well as Well Humored, dam of this year’s Grade 1 Woody Stephens presented by Mohegan Sun-winner Patch Adams.

Completing the field are Grade 3-placed and Temperence Hill third-place finisher Time for Trouble [post 5, Jose Lezcano] for co-owner and trainer Jeff Hiles; two-time winner Digital Ops [post 6, Irad Ortiz, Jr.] for trainer Saffie Joseph, Jr.; and the stakes-debuting Strapped [post 1, Luis Saez] for trainer Rudy Rodriguez.

The Birdstone is slated as Race 7 on Wednesday’s nine-race program. First post is 1:10 p.m. Eastern. 

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