When it comes to horse racing , I've taken a "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with" approach. The pleasant result of this tactic is that I find myself on more bandwagons than the Donner Party (with my eye on better results) and get to hedge my bet a bit. I'm currently sitting comfortably on a handful of bandwagons and two of them meet up this weekend in the biggest prep race since the BC Juvenile.
This would be the Grade III Holy Bull at Gulfstream Park on Saturday. These two horses are Nobiz Like Showbiz, and the only horse to beat him, Scat Daddy. Both horses already have the graded stakes money to get into the Derby and finishing in the money this weekend would make it a lock. Nobiz is the Barclay Tagg (Funny Cide) trained easy to like son of Albert the Great who has 2 big wins (by more than 17 lengths) and a 2nd to Scat Daddy in 3 career starts (all 92+ Beyers). This will be his first start since late November, and his first outside of New York.
Scat Daddy is the Todd Pletcher trained (actually Anthony Sciametta during Pletcher's one month suspension) multiple graded stakes winner who finished a safe fourth to Street Sense in the BC Juvenile. A couple of popular publications list Pletcher as having 9 legitimate Derby contenders which is like Tom Hanks being nominated for best actor for 3 different movies in the same year. It's a bit gaudy and you cant help but feel like a couple of horses arent going to get the best shot because they're competing with each other for the best spots to run. Still, D. Wayne Lukas has, at best, 1 Derby hopeful who just ran 7th of 9 horses in Arkansas, so you cant really fault Pletcher. Still, I'm going to try to. Think George Steinbrenner owning 18 major league baseball teams. I just dont like the "super trainer" trend.
I see this coming down to the 2 aforementioned horses with Kenny McPeek's (Harlan's Holiday) Bold Start sitting off the pace to claim 3rd.
I'd like to applaud the people who devoted the last 8 months to saving the life of Barbaro. It's clear to me from the emotion of the people who stood nothing to gain from a career at stud that this was truly a loved animal. It's a shock to lose a Derby winner, more so one this young. The most recent Derby winner to pass away before Barbaro is Unbridled, winner of the 1990 Derby. The others are spending the rest of their days being treated like royalty on wide green pastures with deep feedbuckets and thick straw in their stalls. The tragedy to me has nothing to do with breeding, but instead with the fact that this member of racing's most elite will never get to pass his lazy days with the pride and dignity he deserves and earned on the track. It's this line of thinking that started the Old Friends program when 1986 Derby winner Ferdinand did not get the treatment due a champion in Japan. Barbaro will be justifiably missed and, in my book, will go down as the only Derby winner to ever complete his career undefeated. Here's hoping he's enjoying his green pasture with the four sound legs that took him to greatness.
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