LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas said he reverted back to his old coaching days this week when it came to getting jockey Jaime Torres to ride Seize the Grey the way he wanted in Saturday’s Grade 2, $600,000 Pat Day Mile at Churchill Downs. “Ride more aggressive,” Lukas said. “My horses run on the pace, they’re more aggressive, so I wanted him to do that.” The 24-year-old Torres took his coach’s instructions to heart as he rode Seize the Grey to victory in the Pat Day Mile, a race that likely earned the 3-year-old son of Arrogate a spot in the Preakness on May 18. After dueling between horses early on Seize the Grey, Torres let his horse drop back a couple of lengths entering the far turn, before re-rallying and splitting horses to win by 1 1/4 lengths. Nash, the 5-2 favorite, got second by a head over Vlahos, who nosed out Who Dey for third. “My coaching came out,” Lukas said. “He responded very well and rode a real smart race.” Said Torres: “I was thinking about him the whole race.” It was the third win from nine starts for Seize the Grey, who is owned by the micro-partnership group MyRacehorse. The horse hadn’t finished galloping out yet when a representative from MyRacehorse yelled out “We’re going to the Preakness.” “With 600 owners you’d have a hard time saying no,” Lukas said. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. It was the first graded stakes win for Torres, a 24-year-old native of Puerto Rico who just started riding in the United States in 2022. “It’s so special for me, since my first mount for Wayne this horse has something,” Torres said. “I don’t know what it is, but my connection with him is something else.” Torres rode Seize the Grey to a maiden victory last summer at Saratoga, beating the highly touted Dornoch. Seize the Grey didn’t win again until an allowance race at Oaklawn in February, under Nik Juarez. Lukas ran Seize the Grey in two Kentucky Derby points-qualifying races, but he didn’t earn enough points to get into the Derby and Lukas didn’t want to sit on the also-eligible list and risk missing running this weekend. On Saturday, Torres hustled Seize the Grey out of the gate and had him between Vlahos and Otto the Conqueror through a quarter-mile in 22.12 seconds. He dropped back a little more than a length while Vlahos continued on through a half-mile in 44.59. Approaching the top of the stretch, Torres asked Seize the Grey to re-engage, but Vlahos, under Edwin Maldonado was still going strong on the front end. Inside the eighth pole, Vlahos began to weaken and Seize the Grey had more to give, passing Vlahos inside the sixteenth pole. “I knew we were going pretty fast, so I just tried to get him to take a breather and at the three-eighths he jumped into the bit again and I was like ‘We got a lot of horse,’ ” Torres said. Seize the Grey covered the mile in 1:35.96 (88 Beyer Speed Figure) and returned $20.84. :: Subscribe to the DRF Post Time Email Newsletter: Get the news you need to play today's races!  Nash was the favorite off a victory in the Hot Springs Stakes on March 23 at Oaklawn. Florent Geroux felt he was getting a good trip, but Nash didn’t finish as well as he would have hoped. “I wish he would have finished a little stronger for me because I thought he was there for me pretty much the whole race,” Geroux said. “When I asked him to go, it took him a little while to get the engine going. I was able to secure second, but he really had to fight really hard to get that.” Vlahos was making his first start off an impressive maiden win going 6 1/2 furlongs on March 9 at Santa Anita. Jockey Edwin Maldonado felt his horse weakened in the final furlong. “When he hit the eighth pole he was done,” Maldonado said. Vlahos finished a nose in front of Who Dey. Behind him, in order, was Top Conor, Carbone, Beeline, Guanare, Northern Flame, Otto the Conqueror, Gettysburg Address, and Frosty Indulgence. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.