Nysos was made the 9-5 morning-line favorite for the 2026 Hill ‘N’ Dale Metropolitan Handicap, giving Bob Baffert’s colt the top billing for the June 6 race at Saratoga Race Course. The $1 million Grade 1 is set as Race 11 with a 5:32 p.m. ET post time, and the one-mile test will help decide which older horse leaves Saratoga with the stronger resume.
Flavien Prat is named to ride Nysos, and the assignment puts one of the most efficient horses in the field on the back of a rider who has handled big-race pressure before. Nysos has seven wins and two seconds from nine lifetime starts, and he already showed why he draws attention when he won the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile last fall.
That record is also why the favorite tag does not come without questions. The only horses to beat Nysos were Mindframe when he returned from a 15-month layoff in 2025 and Forever Young in the $20 million Saudi Cup, results that remind bettors he has not run through every kind of test without losing. The Met Mile is different from shorter races and different from the kind of sharp, controlling trips that can flatter a horse with his speed.
The Metropolitan Handicap has been run since 1891 and remains one of the key older-horse races in the country, with Eclipse Award implications often following the winner home. It is also part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In Series, so Saturday’s result can carry into the fall as well as the older-horse standings. Recent history points to what is on the line: three of the last four Met Mile winners went on to become champion older dirt male, and Flightline and Cody’s Wish each turned a Met Mile victory into Horse of the Year honors.
Baffert has already solved this race twice, with Mor Spirit in 2017 and National Treasure in 2024, and Todd Pletcher is the only other trainer in the current form cycle with multiple wins, through Quality Road in 2010 and Palace Malice in 2014. That gives the race a familiar shape at the top, but Nysos still has to prove he can carry his speed through a full mile against older horses who will not concede anything. If he does, he will be the latest Baffert runner to turn Saratoga’s most important one-mile dirt race into a springboard for something bigger.
