Sean Clancy

ONE, two, three, four… five…goodbye.

Champion Gun Runner aims at his fifth consecutive Grade 1 stakes score in his final career start as he takes on 11 rivals in the Pegasus World Championship Invitational at Gulfstream Park Saturday.

The son of Candy Ride ran the table in America last season, winning five of five (he finished second in the Dubai World Cup in March) to anoint himself as the best of the handicap division, relegating 2016 champion Arrogate to second in command.

In November, Arrogate retired to stud at Juddmonte while Gun Runner aimed to cherry-pick one final big prize before retiring to Three Chimneys Farm.

Owned by Winchell Thoroughbreds and Three Chimneys, trained by Steve Asmussen and ridden by Florent Geroux, Gun Runner is 4/5 on the morning line for the Pegasus, a hybrid (that’s one word to use) of a stakes that is listed as an invitational but requires owners to put $1 million for a spot in the 10-furlong race.

The chesnut five-year-old drew post 10, which theoretically adds to his task, but with instant tactical speed and innate stamina, the 11-time winner stands above all others in the second renewal of the $16 million stakes.

“He’s the perfect weapon,” Asmussen back in August.

For Asmussen, the Pegasus offers the perfect ending to a story that began long before Gun Runner made his debut on September 11th, 2015.

“You tempered your enthusiasm as much as you could because of the multitudes, the billions of things that can happen with a racehorse,” Asmussen said. “We were going to wait and run him at Churchill in September, I’m flying back every week, we work him one morning and I closed the tack-room door and said, ‘If you guys work this horse in 59 one more time, I’m killing everybody.’

“You can imagine, a two-year-old, you move half an ounce forward and he goes in 59, you’re trying to wait and keep everybody from jumping off the cliff…”

Nobody jumped off the cliff and if it goes as plan, Gun Runner will walk off the stage with $15.9 million in career earnings.

Collected, West Coast, War Story, Gunnevera (2-3-4-5 behind Gun Runner) in the Breeders’ Cup Classic line up again. In addition to those chasers, Cigar Mile winner Sharp Azteca, $2.2 million earning mare Stellar Wind (now owned by Tabor, Smith and Magnier) and the one-and-only Toast Of New York add to the intrigue.

• Irish-breds Apple Betty and Go Kart compete in undercard stakes.