The Michael Grantham-trained Westbound, the $2.05 race favourite, turned the Listed Aquanita Stakes at Belmont into a victory procession as the three-year-old son of Toronado had the 2000m contest well and truly won long before he crossed the finish line.
Westbound had scored back-to-back wins in April and May over 1400m and 1800m, but he then found the temperature a touch too hot for comfort in his two subsequent starts when getting his first taste of competition at Listed level, finishing fourth over 1400m and seventh over 1600m in the Raconteur Stakes and the Belmont Guineas respectively.
The Aquanita Stakes … also a Listed race … provided quite a different scenario, even before the runners had left the starting stalls.
In the Raconteur Stakes Westbound started at $12. In the Belmont Guineas Westbound started at $9, being on the third line of betting on both of those occasions.
This time Westbound’s favouritism was clear-cut at $2.05 … with the second favourite Spellborn all the way out at $6 … and the Clinton Johnston-Porter partnered main fancy duly won like a good thing.
Johnston-Porter bided his time early, happy to have Westbound race some twelve lengths off a strong speed in the first half of the race, but the duo had already halved that deficit as the field approached the home turn … and then were only a touch over two lengths back on straightening for the run home.
Westbound had got there with the minimum of fuss, and he completed the job in the same vein, seemingly hardly raising a sweat when racing into an ever-increasing lead from the 200m mark, until Johnston-Porter switched off and allowed Westbound to cruise home in emphatic fashion over the concluding stages.
That allowed the runner-up, Special Counsil ($6.50), to get within 2.72 lengths of the winner at the line to win the race within the race (for second place), because nobody was going to get near Westbound.
This was the Michael Grantham / Clint Johnston-Porter combination’s second successive win in the Aquanita Stakes, having won the race with Arcadia Park in 2025.
