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Old 04-04-2018, 06:22 PM
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RolloTomasi RolloTomasi is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2007
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Quote:
Mendelssohn is completely different to those that have run in the past.
That's a bit exaggerated. Rather than a single prep, Mendelssohn has 2 with the first coming in a modest all-weather stakes where he just did enough to handle the 2 stablemates who followed him to Dubai and got trounced. I can't imagine that race was any more important than the private trials conducted at Ballydoyle with their past Derby hopes.

Quote:
He has an elite dirt pedigree, has won on the surface, has shipped to the USA and won, is a G1 winner, and had been meticulously aimed/prepped for the KY Derby.
The sire of Mendelssohn is hardly elite dirt from a stud record perspective. While Scat Daddy did all his running on dirt (and was injured reportedly when trounced in the Kentucky Derby), he has sired exactly zero Grade 1 winners on the main track in NA. He was clearly more adept as a turf sire. Furthermore, Scat Daddy was also the sire of Daddy Long Legs and Scat Daddy himself was a son of Johannesburg, both of whom were likewise Coolmore Derby duds.

As for his Grade 1 status, the BC Juvenile Turf has been remarkably unproductive with respect to subsequent Grade 1 winners. Oscar Performance and Bobby's Kitten (who won the equally unproductive BC Turf Sprint) are the only subsequent Grade 1 winners from all the top finishers of that race. In fact, aside from Mendelssohn's 2 wins, only Oscar Performance (3 straight stakes) and Hootenanny (2 allowance wins) have won more than one race after winning the BC Juvenile Turf. Actually, 7 of the 11 winners of that race were winless the rest of their careers.
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