Determined Kingdom has made his living, these last few years, taking care of business against Virginia restricted company: three consecutive wins in the Punch Line Stakes and a win, last year, in the Meadow Stable account for most of his recent earnings.

Throw in a couple of other wins and placings and you’ve got a horse that’s amassed a bankroll of more than $550,000 in 21 starts, eight of them victorious.

That was the plan again heading into this year, too, said trainer Phil Schoenthal: target the Colonial Downs meet and its lucrative state-restricted racing.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The five-year-old Animal Kingdom might just be the best he’s ever been, and that could make him competitive in open company.

“Certainly from a speed figure standpoint, Kingdom has taken a step forward in his five-year-old year and has gotten better, which is exciting to us,” Schoenthal said. “I think last year we kind of felt he was a state-bred kind of horse that we would just turn out every fall and winter and kind of point to Colonial every year until he didn’t want to do it anymore.”

Schoenthal, whose Kingdom Bloodstock co-owns Determined Kingdom with Determined Stables, will test his newly improved runner in Sunday’s $150,000 Van Clief Stakes going 5 ½ furlongs on the Colonial Downs turf. Determined Kingdom is a generous 15-1 on the morning line and will have regular pilot Victor Carrasco in the irons.

Determined Kingdom made his season debut in a third-level allowance at Laurel Park June 28. In a similar spot a year earlier, he’d finished a non-threatening sixth, and bettors this time around weren’t overly enthusiastic, either. Determined Kingdom was, at 4.40-1, the longest of the four horses in the field.

But Carrasco put his charge in front early, and the duo never looked back en route to a comfortable, 1 ¾-length victory.

The runner-up, Outlaw Kid, had been second a neck to the very good turf sprinter Witty – also entered in the Van Clief – in his prior start. In his next, Outlaw Kid defeated allowance horses at Aqueduct and set the course record for six furlongs on the turf, a blazing 1:06.73.

“His allowance win to open the season was against real racehorses,” Schoenthal opined.

He earned a career-best 92 Beyer speed figure that day and came right back to run just as well. In his next start, in the Punch Line, Determined Kingdom, off at 1-20, shrugged off early pace pressure from second choice Ship the Goods, opened a long lead, and cruised home to a 1 ¼-length win over stablemate King Covee.

Initially, Schoenthal said, the connections were looking to follow up the Punch Line with another shot in the Meadow Stable August 31. But his impressive wins – and the Van Clief’s placement on the calendar – encouraged them to take a slight detour.

“I think we kind of have the excitement that maybe he’s actually going to be an open caliber kind of horse,” the trainer said. “He’s out of conditions now after that three-other-than win at Laurel, so it’s basically open stakes or state-bred stakes from here on out, and I think a big part of it for us is that the timing fits up to there’s [the Van Clief] at the end of the meet, and so we can hit that.”

But that’s Plan B. Or is it C? Whichever, the more exciting option is what happens if Determined Kingdom runs a big race on Sunday.

“We’re going to use this race as kind of a barometer to decide, are we going to keep him going and tackle open horses going forward or are we just going to stick to our normal plan of going for Colonial every year and having fun with it,” Schoenthal said. “But if he wins this race this weekend, it opens up some things: that million-dollar race at Kentucky Downs [the $2 million, Grade 2 Kentucky Downs Turf Sprint September 7] would be a possibility for him. We’d have to make some choices at that point, good problems and good choices to have to make.”

To have to make it, though, Determined Kingdom will have to outrun some pretty serious racehorses. The Charlie Appleby-trained Mischief Magic is the 5-2 morning line favorite. Winner of the 2022 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, he’s been second, third, and fifth, twice as the favorite, in his last three starts, all in Grade 1 or Grade 2 company.

Elizabeth Merryman will send out the aforementioned Witty (4-1), who sports a flashy record of 3-3-0 from six starts at the trip. He has been second in his last two starts, in a Canadian Grade 2 at Woodbine and in the Jim McKay Turf Sprint at Pimlico. Jevian Toledo is named.

And Michael Stidham will send out Dream Shake, a Grade 2 winner in Canada who most recently was third in another Grade 2 at Woodbine, on the synthetic. Local pilot Ben Curtis will ride.

In his two starts this season, Determined Kingdom has caught smaller fields – four horses in one race, five in the other – and was able to grab the early lead. That seems less likely Sunday, what with a crowded, 12-horse field, several of whom have serious early lick.

But that’s fine with Schoenthal.

“He certainly does not need the lead and is not a one-dimensional horse,” he said of his charge. “If I’m trying to handicap it or prognosticate how the race will unfold, I think that he’ll get outrun early and be kind of sitting in the pocket within two lengths of the lead, be saving all the ground. Hopefully, he has some punch and finds a way through.”

All in all, it’s a pretty ideal spot for a trainer and owner: a horse purchased for just $47,000 who might be good enough to run for some serious coin going forward. And if not, the more conservative, Colonial-focused route has worked just fine.

“We’re excited about it,” Schoenthal said. “I mean, he’s just a really cool horse, and we’re happy for him. We’re just hoping he shows up and runs his race.”

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