[Betsy]

Originally Posted by RolloTomasi

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...

Well, I thought those workouts were necessary because John had undertrained Honor A.P. for the Shared Belief ...he was working on behavioral issues. Personally, I expected him to win easily if he was at 80% or so, as he was for the San Felipe. Problem is, he got slammed by Cezanne at the start and ran erratically thereafter. Most racing media actually didn’t jump off the bandwagon - some did, but it was primarily fans on boards who thought the SB proved he was mediocre. I saw those pre-SB workouts - I don’t think he looked good at all - dull, frankly. So, I thought he definitely needed those faster workouts at DM. It turns out HAP got injured at the start of the Derby, probably in the NY Traffic incident, so we’ll never know if he was over the top. I didn’t think so - I thought he looked great in the week before the Derby.

Ugh, good point about HC’s second dam being by Mr. P - how did I not even think of that, lol? Still, Mr. P inbreeding for an HAP foal would be at least a few generations away on both sire and dam’s sides given that we are referring to his grandsons as broodmare sire (Distorted Humor, Speightstown, etc...) so....not that closer!