Trainer Shug McGaughey liked his maiden winner enough to saddle him three weeks later in Grade 3 company for his second start.

“I’m kind of out of my realm of doing things to come back and race off a maiden race, but I thought he ran so good in the maiden win, I thought it was a place we could take a look and see what happens,” remembered McGaughey about that day last September. “I wasn’t altogether surprised by it. He’d trained good and he’d run good going over that course.” 

Integration carried his Virginia Derby momentum and his Virginia Derby-winning jockey Kendrick Carmouche forward to November with a five-length win in the Grade 2 Hill Prince at Aqueduct completing his three-race sophomore campaign undefeated for West Point Thoroughbreds and Woodford Racing LLC.

However, the leap from his three-year old to a four-year old hasn’t been as easy. When asked whether the jump from three to four was similar to a high school basketball player’s freshman year of college, McGaughey chuckled.

“Maybe sophomore,” the two-time Virginia Derby winner added.

His four-year old season began with a start in the Pegasus World Cup Turf (G1) at Gulfstream, a race that wasn’t initially included in McGaughey’s long-term plan, and though he finished fifth, he was within two lengths of the winner.

“The hole closed up quicker than Tyler (Gaffalione) thought it would, and it just didn’t go our way,” McGaughey said of his jockey, who has the mount this Saturday. 

McGaughey targeted the Maker’s Mark Mile (G1) at Keeneland on April 12 as a lead-in to Saturday’s Turf Classic. That day, for the first time in Integration’s young career, the turf came up yielding. He finished third despite earning a career-best Beyer speed figure of 100.

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Integration drew the rail for Saturday’s tilt in a race targeted by McGaughey since Thanksgiving. 

“The rail doesn’t bother me,” the trainer said. “The biggest thing I want is to have a nice firm turf course.”

McGaughey owns two Virginia Derby wins, with Air Support in 2011 his other. In Saturday’s ninth race at Churchill (3:40 EDT post time), McGaughey starts Cugino (10-1) in the American Turf Stakes (G2) for three-year-olds with sights set down the road on another Virginia Derby contender.

Cugino doesn’t have the perfect three-year-old resume that Integration had but has never finished more than a length or worse than second behind the winner in his four starts, winning only his two-year old start. His most recent race was a second-place finish in the Transylvania Stakes on April 5^th for West Point Thoroughbreds and Jimmy Kahig LLC.

That was Cugino’s third consecutive runner-up finish, and in his last two, he was beaten a nose and a neck. He’ll get blinkers on for Saturday.

McGaughey relishes bringing horses to Colonial for the summer turf.

“I don’t know if there is any other I’d like to run on more than that one,” praised McGaughey.

Integration, meanwhile, will find Program Trading, the horse he ran down in the Virginia Derby, several stalls to his outside. It will be the first start of the year for Chad Brown’s English-bred, who won the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby at Del Mar in December. The Virginia Derby defeat is the only blemish on Program Trading’s five-race career, all with jockey Flavien Prat, who will be back in the American Turf.

Program Trading is 9-2 on the morning line.

Brown also has I’m Very Busy (4-1) with Irad Ortiz, Jr. aboard. While easily defeated by Integration in the Hill Prince, I’m Very Busy finished ahead of his rival when second in the Pegasus World Cup Turf and built on that last out with a win in the Grade 2 Mervyn Muniz Memorial at the Fair Grounds.

Naval Power (7-2) is the morning line favorite for trainer Charles Appleby with Frankie Dettori aboard. He finished second in the Maker’s Mark Mile and has won six of eight career starts.