Itsmyluckyday edged out Moreno to win his first Grade 1 in the Woodward Stakes. (Photos by NYRA/Coglinese Photos)

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Edward Plesa Jr. compared the stretch duel between his Itsmyluckyday and Whitney Invitational winner Moreno in Saturday’s Woodward Stakes to Muhammad Ali’s epic bouts with Joe Frazier.

And he was right.

Both horses were full of fight as they matched stride for powerful stride in the 61^st running of the $600,000 Woodward. Neither combatant was willing to back down. And, oh yes, there was plenty of contact as Moreno drifted out slightly while Itsmyluckyday came in.

Following a stewards’ inquiry, it was determined that Itsmyluckyday’s half-length victory – his first in a Grade 1 event – should stand as the crowd at Saratoga Race Course roared its approval. Prayer for Relief took third.

“It means everything to this horse and that’s my main concern,” Plesa said of the Grade 1 breakthrough in the 4-year-old’s 19^th career start. “For me, needless to say, it is a plus. But it is all about the horse.” The final time for the mile-and-an-eighth thriller was 1:48.84.

Plesa is not a regular at Saratoga’s famed summer meet. He typically spends his summers at the New Jersey shore, at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J. while he winters at Calder Race Course near Miami. But as the trainer said, “When you have a horse like this, he takes you wherever the big races are.”

Moreno benefitted from an unpressured pace when he turned back Itsmyluckyday by 1 ¼ lengths in the mile-and-an-eighth Whitney on Aug. 2. Junior Alvardo thought that should have been the order in the Woodward – with help he believed he deserved from the stewards.

“He was bumping and bumping my horse and my horse lost his action,” Alvarado said.

Eric Guillot, the plain-spoken trainer of Moreno, was equally disappointed. “My horse has a history of running straight. His horse has a history of not. You do the math,” Guillot said.

ITSMYLUCKYDAY RACES MORENO DOWN THE SARATOGA STRETCH

The certainty is that Itsmyluckyday, with the addition of blinkers, was not about to allow Moreno to maintain an unpressured lead as he did in the Whitney. Paco Lopez kept his mount all but glued to the frontrunner’s flank. Itsmyluckyday did not separate himself until the final strides.

“We didn’t want to give Moreno a breather. We didn’t want to depend on anybody else,” Plesa said.

He did not want to credit the reversal of fortune strictly to the blinkers. “They helped some,” he said. “I’m not going to say it was the blinkers and I’m a genius.”

Itsmyluckyday won for the fourth time in six starts this year with one second-place finish. The runner-up in last year’s Preakness owns nine victories in 19 starts with four second-place finishes and one third.

Plesa immediately ruled out the Jockey Club Gold Cup for the horse’s next start, but is unclear how he will map out the rest of the year because the horse was not nominated to the Breeders’ Cup. He said the prospect of supplementing to the Breeders’ Cup remains in play.

For now, he is content to savor the Woodward. “This is what racing is all about,” he said. “You can play that stretch duel for anybody, whether he is a racing fan or not, and he will recognize it as something special.”