Palace Malice Fulfills Promise, Winning Jim Dandy at Saratoga SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - As winter turned to spring, Palace Malice remained a mystery. His trainer, Todd Pletcher, became so desperate for answers after the colt's season-opening four-race losing streak that he equipped him with blinkers for the most significant start of his career, the Kentucky Derby. The attempt to improve the horse's focus only contributed to a wildly run race. Palace Malice rocketed to the lead for jockey Mike Smith and set extraordinary fractions for the mile-and-a-quarter Derby, which ultimately proved unsustainable. He faded to 12th, adding to the exasperation of Dogwood Stable, which purchased him for $200,000 as a 2-year-old in Lexington, Ky. "He is not a difficult horse to train," Pletcher said. It was just frustrating to see the results we were getting because we knew he was much better than that. Now, that frustration is as much a thing of the past as those ill-advised blinkers. Palace Malice continued to rebound from that Derby experiment gone awry by taking the $600,000 Jim Dandy Stakes by one length against Will Take Charge on Saturday at Saratoga Race Course. The win, which reinforced Palace Malice's three-and-a-quarter-length romp in the Belmont Stakes, positioned him at or near the top of a class that does not have a clear leader heading into the Aug. 24 Travers, which should go a long way toward determining year-end 3-year-old honors. "The cream is starting to come to the top," said D. Wayne Lukas, who trains Will Take Charge and will saddle Oxbow, the Preakness winner and the Belmont Stakes runner-up, in the $1 million Haskell Invitational on Sunday at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J. That Grade I contest has also attracted the Kentucky Derby runner-up, Golden Soul, and the Pletcher entry Verrazano, who swept his first four starts before finishing a dismal 14th in the Derby. Pletcher, a four-time winner of the Eclipse Award as the leading trainer in North America, is known for his ability to solve equine puzzles, but he says he is unsure how much credit he or his staff can take for the emergence of Palace Malice. Perhaps nature simply ran its course. "Some of it is him maturing and being a May foal and taking awhile to get it all right," Pletcher said. Now he's getting it all right. The Kentucky-bred Palace Malice earned his first career victory here last August. He could not have been more solid in turning the Grade II Jim Dandy, run at one and an eighth miles, into his second victory in seven starts this year and pushing his lifetime earnings to $1,231,135. He exerted pressure on the pace-setting Moreno by all but attaching himself to his right flank, and Palace Malice wore him down as he spurted free turning for home. Will Take Charge never threatened Palace Malice. Moreno took third. "He was better than last time," Smith said. Those are kind of big words to say after winning the Belmont, but he truly was, and with room to grow. The last sixteenth of a mile, he was well within himself. He was searching for more ground if I needed it. Orb, the Kentucky Derby champion, has been conspicuous in his absence; he was not entered in the Jim Dandy, and he will not be run in the Haskell. Shug McGaughey, a Hall of Fame trainer, made the unconventional decision to train him for the Travers after starting him in every Triple Crown race. Orb breezed four furlongs in 48 1/5 seconds on Saturday morning at Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Md. "I don't think he could be doing any better," McGaughey said. He plans to allow Orb to spend another two weeks at Fair Hill, where Orb snacks on seemingly endless pastures and soothes aching muscles in a hyperbaric chamber. He will be shipped to Saratoga in time to give him two workouts at the Travers site. Earlier Saturday, John Velazquez used the fourth race to surpass his fellow Hall of Famer Jerry Bailey by taking his 694th victory at Saratoga. He rallied aboard Unitarian for Pletcher, who has trained 255 of Velazquez's winners. "I definitely want to say thank you to Todd," the 41-year-old Velazquez said. I've been riding for him since 1998 and we're still going.