POST TIME winner of 8 of 9 starts wins the Carter G2 at Aqueduct

Courtesy of the BloodHorse
Purchased and started by Cary Frommer at the Aiken Training Track

1–POST TIME, 120, c, 4, by Frosted
1st Dam: Vielsalm (SW & GSP, $329,285), by Fairbanks
2nd Dam: Merriweather, by Opening Verse
3rd Dam: Satin Lilly, by Affirmed   ($85,000 Ylg ’21 EASOCT).
O-Hillwood Stable LLC;
B-Dr. & Mrs.    Thomas Bowman, Dr. Brooke Bowman & Milton P Higgins III    (MD);
T-Brittany T. Russell;
Lifetime Record: 9-8-0-1, $582,910.

Post Time wins the Carter Stakes at Aqueduct Racetrack

• By Eric Mitchell

The $279,000 Carter Handicap (G2) was a doppelganger of sorts for trainer Brittany Russell.

A year ago, she won the historic spring stakes with, yes, Doppelganger  , who scored a 17-1 upset. On April 6, another Russell trainee returned to the Aqueduct Racetrack winner’s circle after the Carter, though there were a couple of noticeable differences.

Her 2024 victor, the nearly perfect Post Time , was hardly a longshot. Now a winner of eight of nine career starts, the 4-year-old Maryland-bred Frosted   colt was the 4-5 favorite in an abbreviated field of four. Post Time also received credit for only a grade 2 win as the 126th edition of a race that produced the famed 1944 triple-dead-heat for first was downgraded from its 2023 grade 1 status.

“How rude that they downgraded it after Doppelganger won it. How rude!” Russell said through a laugh after her husband, Sheldon Russell, guided Post Time to a neck victory over Castle Chaos . “But it still feels good to win it.

“I can’t believe we did it two years in a row.”

While Doppelganger did not win a graded stakes after his victory in the Carter, the future appears much brighter for the runner owned by Ellen Charles of Hillwood Stable. The gray or roan colt’s only loss came in October in the Perryville Stakes at Keeneland, when he was third by 1 1/4 lengths, and the Carter gave him back-to-back graded stakes wins following a score in the Feb. 17 General George Stakes (G3) at Laurel Park.

While Russell would not commit to what’s next for Post Time, the prospect of a start in the prestigious one-mile Metropolitan Handicap (G1) June 8 at Saratoga Race Course surely is something to consider.

“I think he’d love the mile. It’s something to think about,” she said. “(Charles) loves to race in Maryland and race at home but we need to think of other things now.”

For Charles, who is in her 80s, Post Time has produced some of the greatest thrills in the sport for a woman who has been associated with racing for most of her life.

“I was born in New York but grew up in Maryland. It was so exciting. These beautiful animals can make you so proud. I’m very fortunate to (work with) people like Brittany and Sheldon.”

Courtesy of the TDN
Pedigree Notes:    Tapit’s Frosted is the sire of Post Time and 25 other black-type winners worldwide. Post Time, a third-generation Maryland-bred for the Bowman family, sold to Cary Frommer at the 2021 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic Eastern Fall Yearling sale for $85,000. His SW & GSP dam Vielsalm has a 2-year-old McKinzie filly named Field Song, who hammered for $80,000 to Mouse at the 2023 edition of that sale. She was bred to Nyquist for 2024. The mare is one of two daughters of Fairbanks, a son of Giant’s Causeway, to produce a stakes winner.