April 9, 2011

As we come to The Wood Memorial at Aqueduct and TheSanta Anita Derby at Santa Anita, I cannot help but think of the “smarts” of the great trainer, Woody Stephens.  Coming into the Belmont back in 1982, Woody needed a good race for Conquiestador Cielo, so he put him in The Met Mile – just 6 days before The Belmont.  C. C. ran a track record 1:33 that day and laid waste to the best 4 year old milers in the world.  He didn’t gingerly handle this horse, who was probably kicking the barn doors down, but he found strong competition for him and raced him.   If you don’t know the outcome, C.C. came back 6 days later and won The Belmont by some 15 lengths.   Now I am not at the point of telling trainer Pletcher that he should or should not be doing something, I am just reflecting on an option that the greatest trainer I have ever seen figured out for his 3 year old colt.  The reason I am making this reflections is that Pletcher’s Uncle Mo is going to have another race in which he is going to have no competition.    In fact the competition level of this Wood Memorial is so slow and classless that the only way that Uncle Mo will get enough out of this is to run off on his own and stretch is legs and fill up his lungs with some of that good New York air!   MY CONCERN IS THAT UNCLE MO will do as he always does, rate kindly and then kick through the lane.   I am certain we are looking at the greatest horse since the amazing Affirmed and Seattle Slew,   maybe the best to ever look through a bridle even as great as the immortal Secretariat and Citations, but he hasn’t had any proper conditioning and trainer Pletcher has treated this horse with such a tender touch as to leave him without the needed conditioning to dust off all these in the KD…

Typically leading up to the KD, the eventual winner runs at least 2 prep-races with a minimum number of a 76 and a 77 as 3 year olds,  another prep race or two leading up to the major preps.  It’s also true that usually, these two prep races are the best races of the colts career.  Sometimes they even hit numbers as high as 80.5.  In fact in the case of Point Given he only had 2 prep races and ran an 80.0 and an 80.5, while Monarchos ran a 77.0 and a 78.0, with aditional Preps.  Naturally, Monarchos ran much better in the Derby beating the better horse, Point Given.  So I do understand, you don’t want your colt to peak too soon and Uncle Mo ran an unbelievable 81.3 in the BCC after running an amazing 76.0 in the Champagne as a 2 year old.  But his conditioner at Gulfstream was a lowly 69.5 going a mile at Gulfstream.   So if he does the same kind of thing tomorrow in the Wood, go to the lead, wait for some signal for J.R. Velasquez and spring home, beating junky horses by a mile but only logging a lowly 74.0 or less, I have to wonder out loud if he will be able to run an 81.0 in the Derby which is surely going to be a minimum to beat horses like The Factor and some others that are really-really-really fast.   As happens, when great horses come along, there are those that are worthy who will test them.   Usually, we forgett who would play Sanhedrin to Seattle Slew or Lots of Gold to Spectacular Bid.  And it’s probably likely that Seattle Slew would have beaten Sanhedrin with less than the best setup-condidioning and it’s a certainty that Spectacular Bid could have stumbled out of the barn after a night on the town and laughed going by his seemingly mottly crew, but Affirmed had to beat a fellow named Alydar.   And to beat Alyday, Affirmed had to have every ounce of conditioning and nothing turning any hairs the wrong way.   So if the others prove to be any Alydar’s I am concerned that the best horsein the past 30 years might be very vulnerable on the the First Saturday in May…So when we watch this edition of the Wood,  lets be cheering for some of these other horses to surprise us with some big trys… Oh yeah, just to say it one more time, WELL DONE WOODY!