I caught the end of your opinions on the Pacific Classic on my way into work this morning Steve and I think it’s a very interesting discussion.
On one hand, Maximum Security ran his usual strong race. He’s clearly a very good horse. I don’t put a lot of stock in the “who did he beat” talk because he beat who showed up. The runner up is a good turf horse who has run well on dirt. Higher Power seems sour on racing at this point and who knows what Midcourt is going to show up from race to race. The other two stink, but again, it’s no surprise where he was running so hard to fault him there.
I also don’t put any stock into the inane conspiracy that Espinoza held Midcourt early because Baffert put him on the 2 year old rocket earlier in the card. I heard later that Privman talked about Espinoza having a relationship with the owners of the 2 year old.
I do think Midcourt is a much better horse when he is involved early and he didn’t break as well Saturday as he did last time and the plan didn’t seem to be on the pace this time. I also think he regressed this time, whereas Maximum Security improves in his 2nd start off the bench.
Ultimately, the reason why Maximum Security will always be the kind of horse who is under appreciated is he represents a lot of what people (bettors) despise about the sport. He’s a horse whose trainer didn’t think much of, running for a 16k tag in his debut. His trainer was long suspected of being a move up guy and he went from 16k maiden claimer to Kentucky Derby winner 4 races later.
Then his trainer gets indicted by the feds for the same thing bettors have been saying for years and while there is no proof he was getting the PED’s that the Servis horses were getting, you can kind of guess he was. So they move him from Servis to Baffert. Maybe the greatest dirt trainer of all time, but also a guy with his fair share of medication overages, conspiracies, etc. People (online idiots and non idiots alike) question Baffert performances as well.
Then you add in his owners, who by all means seems like charitable people...but have also behaved like petulant children since the minute the horse was DQ’d from the Derby.
None of this is the horses doing....he just does his job everytime. And he’s a fantastic horse. But his human connections do him no favors and he’ll always be the poster child for what Servis was doing
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