Quote:
Originally Posted by King Glorious
You know damn well that trainers set up training and racing schedules to have their horses peak at certain times. Do not try to insult anyone's intelligence by insinuating that he had him as cranked up and ready to toll in the Jim Dandy as he did in the Classic. When he sent him out in the Southwest Stakes, you think the screws were as tight as they were for the Derby? Stop it. You know what I mean when I said his two biggest tests were the Derby and the BC Classic. Those were the two where he was trained to be at his best.
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I like this, you downplay the significance of the Belmont Stakes and Travers and focus only on the Southwest and Jim Dandy? Laughable...and disingenuous.
We don't know which races (if any) Cox altered the horse's training schedule for specifically. I could believe that he "tightened the screws" the most for the Belmont, not only because he was expected to win based on his pedigree (Tapit), but also because of the 12 furlong distance and the fact that he lost the Derby (and thus had to win in order to be a classic winner). And I could believe he also cranked him up for the Travers, too (arguably he did, simply because he put an extra race into him by running in the Jim Dandy--an insignificant race in your opinion apparently) because a win in that race that would likely cement him the 3yo Eclipse.
Tons of horses are past their peak in BC (Letruska, Riboletta, Fusaichi Pegasus, Forty Niner, Aptitude, Best Pal, etc.); that's why the whole thing fails as a "Championship" event.
But whatever, I'm not campaigning for one horse or the other. I only responded because someone posted that Essential Quality had little going for him compared to the other two.
I can see Medina Spirit winning the Eclipse what with his ho-hum spring campaign, his unexpected Derby wire job, his failed post-race Derby test, his pumpkin-like effort in the Preakness 2 weeks later, his exile to Los Alamitos, his thrilling comeback at Del Mar in a listed stakes in a 4-horse field, his strategic "post 9" scratch from the Penn Derby when Baffert realized that he was running into a buzzsaw in Hot Rod Charlie, and the all important win against older horses when he beat the Iowa Derby winner Stilleto Boy (a 3yo) by a pole in a race at Santa Anita named for a horse owned by the owner of Santa Anita that never started at Santa Anita, all capped off by a futile effort in defeat in the BC despite having the benefit of that summer cakewalk campaign.