[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by Danzig

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.

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.