There were two performances at Belmont Park on June 6 that were so brilliant that they gave you the chills. One, of course, was by that 3-year-old who did that thing that hadn’t been done in 37 years. The other, understandably obscured by American Pharoah’s historic achievement, was Honor Code’s victory in the Metropolitan Mile.On Saturday at Saratoga, however, Honor Code gets the spotlight as the 3-1 morning-line favorite in the Whitney, which has drawn the deepest field of older horses assembled for any race this year. The seven Grade 1 winners in the field have, in the last 18 months, accounted for a Belmont, Donn, Jockey Club Gold Cup, Met Mile, Stephen Foster, Travers, Whitney, and Wood Memorial. It’s so tough a field that last year’s winner, Moreno, is the seventh choice at 12-1 on the morning line in a likely field of nine (Coach Inge is expected to scratch).The Whitney, first run in 1928, is supposed to be tough. By my count, an incredible 18 Whitney winners have been enshrined in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame across Union Avenue from the track, including Dr. Fager, Easy Goer, Gallorette, Kelso, Lady’s Secret, Personal Ensign, Stymie, Tom Fool, and War Admiral. Not to mention Alydar, Carry Back, Challedon, Counterpoint, Devil Diver, Discovery, Equipoise, Invasor, and Slew o’ Gold.Honor Code has plenty to do to be mentioned in the same breath as those immortals, but since making his debut two Saratoga meets ago, he has been one of the most talented, compelling – and frustrating – racehorses in the sport.Honor Code, a beautifully bred ridgling by A.P. Indy and the Storm Cat mare Serena’s Cat, is a deep closer with an extraordinary late kick that has drawn comparisons to Silky Sullivan and Zenyatta. You may never see a horse rally from farther back to win his debut than Honor Code did on a sloppy track on Aug. 31, 2013. Literally out of the picture while 22 lengths back after a half-mile, he stormed up the rail to win by 4 1/4 lengths over two next-out winners. Then came a Champagne where he came from 11 lengths back to miss by just a neck to Havana. He might have been the favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, but trainer Shug McGaughey opted to skip the cross-country trip and bring Honor Code along more slowly for a run at the classics, and he won the Remsen in his final start at 2. A ligament tear kept him sidelined for most of his 3-year-old season, however, but when he returned to stakes action this March at Gulfstream, he was clearly back at his best, roaring from 15 lengths back to win the Gulfstream Park Handicap.What makes his Whitney start so fascinating is that it will be just his fourth start in a two-turn race. The Remsen was his first, but it was a weirdly run race: The pace was so slow (52.74 seconds and 1:17.52) that he was on or near the lead the whole way and won a sprint to the wire. It didn’t answer the question of whether he is a closing miler or a true router. Neither did the Alysheba, where he completely failed to fire.The Whitney should provide an answer. If he doesn’t have his usual kick when he tries two turns in a truly run race, he could drop back to one-turn miles in races such as the Kelso and the Cigar Mile. If he passes the two-turn test, it’s probably on to the Jockey Club Gold and a possible showdown with American Pharoah in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.Four’s a crowdLast weekend’s glut of stakes races for 3-year-olds was mostly a wasteful spectacle of short fields and bloated purses. No complaints about the $1.75 million Haskell, where a record crowd filled Monmouth for American Pharoah’s easy and dominant victory, but the three other stakes races all suffered from their timing. The $600,000 Jim Dandy at Saratoga had a field of just four, a day after a field of six contested the $100,000 Curlin over the same track. The $750,000 West Virginia Derby drew a field of second-tier horses who would have shown up for less than half that purse.Two races that weekend would work much better than four. One solution to consider is to eliminate the Curlin and reschedule the West Virginia Derby. The Curlin does nothing but thin the field for the Jim Dandy, and there is no need to have nine-furlong stakes races for 3-year-old males on consecutive days at the same track. Nor are there enough good 3-year-olds to fill a West Virginia Derby on the same weekend as the Haskell and Jim Dandy. Moving that race to the July 4 weekend would make it a better race while making the Haskell and Jim Dandy bigger and better, too.