Derby Prep Race Recap-
Santa Anita Derby
– Easily the most confusing prep of the weekend as the sloppy track and odd
jockey tactics left me with more questions than answers. Exaggerator has been
well beaten by Nyquist in each of his starts, but he broke through with an
incredible turn of foot in the Santa Anita Derby. Mike Smith set blazing, unnecessarily
fast fractions on Danzing Candy (Earth to Mike, this isn’t Songbird and no one
is challenging you for the lead), so Exaggerator got the perfect setup. Did
Danzing Candy burn out or did he just hate the slop? Probably both. Gary
Stevens didn’t even attempt to ride Mor Spirit who put in a mild rally late for
second. Personally think Mor Spirit is sitting on a huge one in the Derby, and
I still question Exaggerator’s talents, but it would be hard to ignore him and
he is a must use if it ends up sloppy on the First Saturday in May.
For what it’s worth, Exaggerator’s final quarter was done in
25.69 seconds, and next quickest home Mor Spirit was 26.68. Neither fractions were
particularly fast and Exaggerator’s Beyer was the biggest of the 3yo preps for
the weekend, a 103. That makes me question Beyer’s figures more than the horse’s
time. Especially since a horse broke his maiden at the same distance going .58
seconds quicker than Exaggerator in the first race on the card.
Wood Memorial – A
bunch of dogs up north or what? Hard to tell. Outwork was second to Destin by a
nose in the Tampa Bay Derby and returns to barely beat a maiden in the Wood
Memorial while Shagaf runs up the track. Derby picture not getting any clearer
other than the fact that the Derby winner isn’t coming out of New York. Outwork
has room to improve as he is a son of Uncle Mo out of an Empire Maker mare, but
how good is he? It’s hard to gauge, but a maiden shipping in from California to
almost beat him doesn’t bode well.
Only positives from Outwork’s steady crawl to the wire is
that he ran 42 feet, or roughly 5 lengths more than second-placed Trojan
Nation.
Not to mention Outwork ran the slowest Wood Memorial in the
history of the race, crawling home in 1:52.92 seconds. You’d have to go back to
1952 to find the next-slowest time. Yet Outwork still managed a 93 Beyer,
quicker than the Blue Grass winner’s 91. Me thinking Beyer may have had too
much to drink.
Blue Grass Stakes
– Besides having a phenomenal Blue Grass experience personally, I think Brody’s
Cause was one of the most impressive winners from the weekend. He had trouble
with traffic heading into the first turn, had to check, settled in the back and
made a huge sweeping move, splitting horses to get up and win by 1 ¾ lengths. There
was a bit of a pace collapse as the top 3 finishers were 11th, 13th
and 12th respectively after a quarter of a mile, but each of the
three were also valid contenders.
People are raving about My Man Sam’s performance but I would
like to point out that despite looking like he ran much wider than the others,
he only covered 2 more feet than Brody’s Cause which is equivalent to less than
a head. His final furlong was just a hair quicker than Brody’s as Brody did his
in 25.34 seconds, My Man Sam in 25.17 seconds, and Brody averaged a faster MPH
speed for the race than My Man Sam did by .1 mph. Not to mention if Corey
Lanerie had kept riding Cherry Wine strong to the wire, he would’ve finished
second instead. Not to take anything away from the Chad Brown trainee, he still
put in an impressive performance, but I think people are looking further into
it than need be. Brody’s Cause was a dominant victor at Keeneland. Cherry Wine
ran huge. My Man Sam ran huge. Great race.
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