Again, I'm going to bypass your comments about all of AP Indy's flaws as a sire because I just don't know where you are coming from here.
Aside from his undesirable racehorse characteristics, A.P. Indy has one of the worst "unsoundnesses" a stallion can have from a purist's perspective. His genitalia are flawed. He has one testicle. Both he and many of his sons (entire or not) pass on this trait at a high incidence. Some of his male offspring have even been near sterile (eg AP Valentine). Thankfully, artificial insemination is not allowed with Thoroughbreds, otherwise, were he to become an overwhelmingly dominant sire, the breed would be headed towards infertility. I suppose the endpoint would be something similar to a mule...
The Alabama was not MN's best race, IMO and in the opinion of her connections. In this race, she didn't cruise up as she normally (and willingly does - do not compare her to AP Adventure, who was no good) does. She had to work a bit.
Based on Proud Spell leaving her high and dry at the 1/4 pole, I'm gonna hold out and say that she doesn't have the turn speed of a more agile horse, something we've seen a lot of with AP Indy horses, particularly the plodding type.
This was in part because her CCA apparently took something out of her (her workout at Greentree center in Saratoga wasn't that good and you'll note that I posted about that here at the time; also, read the Blood Horse's recap of the Gazelle. They wanted Javier to wrap up on the filly because he had let her run a huge race in the Oaks and that took some starch out of her in the Alabama).
She had a month in between races. She ran her race at Saratoga. She just finally ran into a good horse that wasn't compromised by racing luck. Castellano had a ton of horse when he pulled alongside Proud Spell. The CCA Oaks didn't take the starch out of Music Note (for 4 straight weeks?) down the lane...Proud Spell sticking her neck out and locking horns with her did...
I've never understood why MN or any horse gets penalized by fans for having some sort of "advantage" at a greater distance. I can understand if one horse is carring 10 lbs fewer than another, but in this case, any advantage MN has is genetic.
That wasn't the point. We all know Music Note probably prefers more ground than Proud Spell. That's what makes Music Note's loss to that one, at her preferred distance, all the more definitive.
In any case, if LB was supposed to be some sort of rabbit, she (or rather Maragh, her jock) did a lousy job. Instead of setting racehorse fractions (I'm not asking for blazing, just even ordinary), he decided to strangle LB and set trotting horse fractions.
As I said in the other post, I don't think she was suppose to go rocketing out of there. Music Note hasn't up to this point shown any sort of reliance on the early fractions of a race (at least as a 3yo), so I don't think that was an issue. But its possible that Little Belle was in there to hound Proud Spell and in particular Proud Spell's jockey, who has been called out more than once for being a bit green at this stage of his career. Maybe she was just in there because it was another slam-dunk, ho-hum Grade 1 placing that enhances her value. Either way, it didn't do Proud Spell any favors having to put that one away after soft fractions and then have to brace herself for the stablemate that was laying in wait throughout.
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