Quote:
Originally Posted by v j stauffer
When Garcia won the Big Cap on MISREMEMBERED and Joel finished off the board on St. Trinians. He made the change.
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The best part of this was some genius convinced the trainer of St. Trinians, a mare who was riding a 4 or 5 race win streak (all by open lengths) since coming to the US, to run her against males and stretch out an additional 1.5 furlongs in the Big Cap rather than waiting a week for the Santa Margarita.
In her prior start, St. Trinians had dusted BC Distaff winner Life Is Sweet (along with the place horse, Spinster winner Mushka) as well as Zardana, who one race later upset Rachel Alexandra in her 4yo debut at Fair Grounds.
I guess none of that was convincing enough to try Zenyatta coming off a 4 month layoff.
The connections were vindicated in the end, though. Zenyatta beat by a length or so the same horses in the Santa Margarita that St. Trinians was beating by 4-5 lengths. So it was wise to avoid a head-to-head matchup.
With an additional start under her belt (and with St. Trinians being knocked off form in the Big Cap), Zenyatta was also able to prove a 1/2 length best over St. Trinians a couple of months later in the Vanity. With such a dominating win, no one could be disappointed that there wasn't the early matchup at Santa Anita. And it's not like people were interested in some sort of rival for Zenyatta within her own division (since her connections refused to target the plentiful open 10 furlong races in CA).