Nice tactics by Indian Blessing's camp
 

You have a filly with tremendous early speed who has repeatedly staggered home through the stretch in all of her race except her debut at 5.5 furlongs - only winning each times because Indian Blessing fractures fields with her tremendous speed - which has always been on display in either the early or middle stages.

Gomez opts to rate her - takes away by far her greatest weapon (her natural speed) and basically turns the race into a 2 furlong stretch sprint with a filly who has always won inspite of staggering through the stretch.

That was really fun stuff to watch. You have a four horse field - two of which are VERY overmatched - and the connections of the more likely winner of the other two do everything in there power to give the other runner every chance.

I was hoping Indian Blessing would not be on her game today and made a bet on Proud spell to get her revenge. Agree with you on the jocks ride however. She could have opened up very easily coming out of the turn..

different tactics likely would have yielded the same result at that distance. she staggers home in all her races.

It's a long year but this one will be hard to top for stupidest ride. I only hope he was following instructions because I'd hate to believe he was the dumb on his own.

That is very wrong.

She could have easily opened up 5 without being asked - and only rated slightly instead of being strangled.

Though - if Gomez did that - the no-name jock on the winner would have had to use Proud Spell to keep her within a length or two.

Different tactics would have made things a lot tougher on Proud Spell - no matter how easy the breater, Indian Blessing is never going to accelerate in the lane.

They used different tactics at that distance the last time and the result was different.

There was a multiple stakes winning pace setting sprinter in that race (Miss Missile) to keep Indian Blessing from being ridden stupidly.

Normally - an early speed horse is best served by getting the kind of ride Gomez gave Indian Blessing today. However, Indian Blessing is not your typical speed horse...anyone who's ever seen her races should know that.

It's a lot of fun to see human connections give races away.

I thought for a minute that Jose Santos must have come back and climbed aboard for that ride.

You wouldn't think he would be....but who knows.
He had a good day overall. I thought some of his other rides today were timed perfectly.

my number one pet peeve...if you have the clearly superior pace horse you dont try to steal it and turn it into a turf race the last 2 furlongs. Sure if you are not as good and trying to steel it you try that but that horse has one advantage over the field, her speed.

Honestly though isnt that what Gomez does on all his mounts? He would rate Holy Bull.

I thought this was the likeliest scenario today. Proud Spell gets run into the ground by Indian Blessing. Instead, Gomez gets cute and Proud Spell is handed the race.

Very true... he's best from off the pace.

and for the record I was not criticizing his riding in general, just saying you know what you are getting with him going in.

Oh yea, I wasn't responding thinking you were criticizing him. Indian Blessing needs Pat Day to come out of retirement. She needs that extra quarter tank late in the race.

I'll venture to say she wins the Test Stakes this year.

Gomez is a fine rider - there's no doubt of that. I was his biggest fan on the old AOL boards - back when he was a rider who couldn't ever crack the top 5 standings out west and got awful mounts.

His ride on Hard Spun in the Belmont was also very interesting - he could have made an easy, clear, and unpressured lead with Hard Spun in that race - but instead he opted to strangle him off the pace and get drowned by Tiago in the process.

:D

thats wrong, your way off if gomez let her open up the race was over

dont get me wrong proud spell is a very very good filly, but today she should not have won

It made NO difference what Gomez did if they went 50 49 48 47 or 46 to the half Proud spell was going to be right off her flank that was there game plan going in. So to say Gomez gave her a poor ride is totally absurd. The better filly won today.

i think he gave her a poor ride as he fought with her thru much of the race-an unwinnable situation for all involved. rather than expend her energy running, she had to fight her rider. she's headstrong, and he knows it. best thing to do would be let her run her race, and hope she had enough at the end.
had proud spell made an effort to stay with her early on with presumably faster fractions, she may not have had enough left at the end to finish strongly and pass the leader.

I totally disagree. The horse tries to run off in every race. He went the second quarter in 23.3, he tried to get the jump going into the second turn but couldnt open up any ground on the other filly and was passed rather easily. Horses dont have accelarators and brakes. If he lets her run in the first turn, sets fractions much faster than the older horse stake and LA Derby and gets run down and everybody is calling him an idiot. You have to try to get a horse like her to rate if you are going to be successful in the big races at 1 1/8th or further. If they just run off, open up and hold on they will be guaranteed a short career. She set reasonable fractions and was beaten by a better horse who happen to run faster than everybodys Derby horse. She simply is not going to be very effective on honest surfaces further than a mile, especially against the other top fillies.

i agree with you that she wont be very affect stretching out vs top fillies.

BUT todays race is the point, and if gomez let her go she was gone, might have won for fun, he fought with her, choked her and she came up empty, because of him

i do know from years of watching, that teaching a horse to rate is far from an easy task. perhaps they should just understand that this horse has distance limitations due to her running style, and point her accordingly. and after today, maybe they will.

now i totally agree with that...
i think her limit is obviously 1 1/16, if gomez let her go today i am sure she wins for fun.

The voice of reason, finally.

Some of these guys don't get it. This filly was toast in that long stretch no matter what she did. The other horse 'pushes a bigger gear' --simple as that. I didn't notice Gomez overly restraining her and had he gone faster earlier, they'd have been passed that much faster in the stretch.
What's everybody watching when it comes to this filly? She's absolutely gutless and wins when she has an overwhelming advantage. I'm sure this isn't a revelation to Baffert or her other connections (with the exception of the owner's son, of course) and they knew they were cooked in either case and tried something a little bit different.

I'm all for fairness in racing and the (much) better horse won. It's, thus, all good.

Dont you think that if she is not able to run uncontested 1/2 miles in 48 and win, she pretty much is not going to be a factor in the important races? Dont you think that this was the strategy considering that the KY Oaks is the probable goal? You can blame Gomez all you want but she simply was outrun by a better horse today. This isnt like she went in 50. She stole the 1st quarter in 24.2 and then proceeded to run unchallenged throughout. Sometimes you guys forget that a horses campaign is not a series of isolated races, they are all relative to each other. I'm not convinced that she is better than the other filly, especially at the FG and at the distance.

If gomez opened her up and let her set sail IB would have lost by an even larger margin. He used the tactics everyone seems to like last time and only held on by a diminishing length to Proud Spell who was coming of the bench.
IB does not seem to be able to run routes with a very even speed distribution.
Proud Spell is the better horse period.

ok. proud spell is a very very nice filly and i have said that a number of times, but i will stick to the fact that i belive today, in this 4 horse race i dont think there is anyway she beats indian blessing if gomez opens up on the turn, like another poster stated earlier she could have opened up 5 easily, and proud spell would have been used up to go, or sit back and possibly have to much ground to make up

I was not happy to see her expose herself today. I was hoping she would be undefeated going into the Oaks and would play against her there. Gomez was quite happy with his ride, and infact thought she ran better today than in the Silverbullet Day.

Everyone who is stupid would have been a critic of that ride maybe.

She ran over the same track and distance as Pyro last time - and was denied the lead by the very speedy Miss Missle through fractions MUCH faster than the stake Pyro ran in - and IB beat Proud Spell that day.

Your only arguement is that rating her hard like that might settle her down in future races.

I think you know all speed horses aren't the same - and that ride enabled Proud Spell to sit the dreamiest trip she will ever have in her life. She was rating kindly with a target - just off of the rank and hard held Indian Blessing.

When a horse's only weapon is their sensational raw speed - and they are an undefeated Multiple Grade 1 winner - you don't try to strangle them and take away there only weapon.

It's not like Indian Blessing hasn't already beaten Proud Spell at multiple occasions at this distance.

Both horses get overbet off of this race - Indian Blessing gets overbet because she's a sprinter and everyone smart has always known it.

Proud Spell gets overbet off of this race because Garret Gomez gave her the trip of a lifetime - and he did it while riding another horse in the race.

I told KG a few months back when he was touting her as a Derby horse that she was a runoff. She still is. Sometimes a horse will mature out of it or perhaps with different connections a la Lawyer Ron. You cant just let them fly every time, they wont last very long if you do.

she came up short.. thats about it. if she had rated and drew off..we wouldnt have this conversation.. is the fight on yet?

That's a cowardly way to put it because of how the schedule looks from here out.

The question is not who the better horse is - even though Indian Blessing still owns a 2-to-1 head-to-head record over Proud Spell at the distance - obviously PS is the horse you want going forward.

However, Indian Blessing doesn't lose a match race scenerio to her if ridden correctly.

Thats BS because 3 year olds at this time of the year improve and catch up to the early maturing horses. Each races is not the same. Maybe her headstrong ways are already catching up to her physically. My arguement is that ANY horse that is a top horse that cant finish after a 48 half mile simply is not that good. The other filly gobbled her up after 7 furlongs. That is a bad sign. I simply dont think the horse is that good. Opening up 5 would have made no difference. There are 2 other races to use as a guage and she ran almost identical fractions for the 1st half mile. If there were a few more horses in there she may have been off the board. As a matter of fact I would not be surprised if she doesn run again for awhile.

why are ppl not going crazy over this ignorant comment ??? the way they do when other ppl post something ignorant ?


proud spell will never accomplish what indian blessing already has in her career.
she is a breeders cup winner and a champion. i love proud spell but i doubt she will ever have the credentials that indian blessing has

We agree here. Whether she can run 10f or even 9f is not the point. Today's race was 8.5f, a distance she's won at several times and at a track she's won on so the long stretch wasn't what got her beat today. It was the worst ride since McCarron tried the same tactics on King Glorious and Avenging Force beat him. Cannon says he's not convinced she's not better than the other filly and that may be true. But she had just beaten the other filly at that track and distance last time. It's my belief that you've got to prepare to win today's race before you start worrying about races two months down the line. Gomez rode the race perfectly.......for Proud Spell's rider. He put absolutely no pressure on him to make any kind of decisions. We all know that Indian Blessing is not going to outrun me down the lane of a race so her only chance is to use her speed advantage to open up as big an advantage as possible and hope they run out of run trying to catch her. She's not going to beat them if they are only two lengths back turning for home and they've gone that slow. She's just not. If Gomez allows her to run her natural race, then he's going to force Proud Spell's rider to make a decision. Does he go after her earlier and maybe take some of his own filly's stretch punch away? Or does he let IB waltz away and risk not catching her? He never had to make a choice because Gomez made it for him. Fat Man says that Baffert knew he was cooked no matter what so he tried different tactics. With all due respect, I think that's crazy. Why would he think he was cooked and need to try different tactics when the old tactics have led her to wins each time? I will agree with Cannon that IF they are looking further down the road, here was the perfect chance to see how she would respond to the different tactics. Obviously, they didn't work. I wouldn't be at all surprised though to see them go back to what they know works and have her still be a major factor in the Kentucky Oaks. I mentioned King Glorious earlier. This is very reminiscent of that situation. You have a horse that's seems like he is a runoff and can't be rated so you try it to see what happens and it costs you but you learn from it and come back next time and let the horse do what they do best. KG came back to win the Ohio Derby and the Haskell easily. I could take this loss better if she had lost while running her race. She didn't.

totally agree, match race between these 2 take gomez off, hell i would love to see cc lopez on her.... proud spell never gets close.

That's pretty funny.

If Indian Blessing rates in hand - instead of being strangled - she'd have gone faster - BUT, so would Proud Spell...the rider would have to use her to keep her in a stalking position.

There is no way Indian Blessing would have a 5 length lead in that race unless she was put to a drive....using her speed takes PS out of her dream trip and forces her to chace and finish.

I know you defended Gomez's strangling rides on Hard Spun in the Belmont and his ride on Dream Rush that day to a lesser extent - who won back to back Grade 1's for Coa in her next two.

OK, I must be missing something.

Time for me to rethink my position.

dont re think anything you are correct and so am i.

gomez strangles to many horses, hard spun in the belmont is classic example... look what he went on to do after the belmont... being by danzig if gomez sends him i dont think curlin or the filly rags to riches would have cought him.