Quote:
Originally Posted by Betsy
I think the Shared Belief turned many permanently against him, but he was severely undertrained for the race. As to the Derby, he ran even better than was first thought as he was on good legs.
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More realistically, the horse was severely overtrained for the Kentucky Derby.
Presumably taking his cue from Mike Smith's inane guidance, Shirreffs had the horse perform more workouts than normal leading up to the Derby, as he breezed only a week after the Shared Belief. He then put in 3 workouts with a jockey up, over increasing distances, on tightened surfaces different from what the horse was training over in the mornings (each time he breezed a few minutes prior to the first race in the afternoons), with overzealous gallop outs. That's a ripe formula for "squeezing the lemon dry" as they say.
Never mind the horse being over-the-top, it was probably also his undoing as far as his subsequent leg injury.
Outside of Mike Smith's typical straw-clutching post-race commentary, not sure where the presumption originated that John Shirreffs forgot to train Honor A.P. for the Shared Belief. As you said, wins aren't everything and most people wouldn't have been surprised to see Shirreffs use the Shared Belief strictly for what it was---a prep race.
At any rate, Honor A.P. does have Mr. Prospector within 4 generations (Honor Code's 2nd dam is by Mr. P). That carefully worded blurb in the Lane's End press release about his
dam being free of Mr. Prospector was probably another clever ploy to confuse potential clients that somehow breeding to him would avoid inbreeding to Mr. Prospector, which is not the case.
Truth be told, I'm not sure why one would be scared of inbreeding to Mr. Prospector anyways. This year alone, 4 of the top 5 3yo colts (Tiz The Law, Maxfield, Nadal, Charlatan) are inbred to Mr. Prospector. Now 3 of those are on the sidelines which presumably is why inbreeding to Mr. Prospector is frowned upon (unsoundness), but the genesis of those injuries aren't necessarily solely genetic (i.e. supertrainers burn through horses of all shapes and sizes).
Certainly I'd much rather have Mr. Prospector influencing my horse's pedigree than I would have Mike Smith influencing its training...