The horse was completely mismanaged - I guess this was the owners doing, but he was always in over his head. He was a glorified 30-40k claimer that would occasionally hit the board in bad west coast graded races - but hadn't won a race in over 2 years.
What did seem odd was that his preferred surface, Hollywood Park, was completely ignored this fall (possibly due to issues) and brought back over an off SA track.
I completely agree that if it was any other trainer, there wouldn't have been a mention.
But to infer that this horse was "stakes caliber" dropping, while technically accurate, wasn't really at all the case.
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