It’s not quite the long goodbye – the US will bid farewell to its latest equine sweetheart over a mere mile and a quarter this weekend. He’s head and shoulders the best of this field, and trainer Bob Baffert has him primed for his swan song. A total of 10 races were oversubscribed which means that the pre-entries for these 10 races had more than 14 horses entered (or 12 in the Filly & Mare Turf and Dirt Mile). “I will never forget that day”. There was the famous – and ultimately tragic – match race between Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure back in 1975.
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“Where he would rank with Affirmed, Seattle Slew, the run of good horses in the ’70s, is still open for debate”, Young said.
Mandella ended his news conference on a wistful note, saying, “This is still a great race”.
Ann Hayes from Versailles, Kentucky, was at Keeneland before daylight Thursday to catch a glimpse of the Breeders’ Cup horses, especially American Pharoah.
American Pharoah does not appear to have been affected by traveling, winning his eight races (out of 10) in six different states. They’ll be prohibitive favorites in Saturday’s $5 million Classic and $3 million Turf, respectively. The Belmont typically draws about 7 million, but the prospect of a Triple Crown victor lifted that this year to more than 20 million. A few days later, a new plan was hatched to target the Classic as Pharoah’s final race.
For that race, for luck, Mandella carried a future-book win ticket in his shoe on Pleasantly ideal and almost forgot about it until he was leaving the park.
After that Travers Stakes defeat, Zayat Snr. toyed with retiring Pharoah to stud rather than run in the Classic.
Surrounded by reporters and unprompted, Baffert took out his cellphone and showed a picture. “Is it the time?” “The thing I’m most proud of is he excited all of us, all of his fans, the sport”. Today was more to get him used to the bend and the scenery, and he was very straight. “Grand Slam sounds too much like tennis”.
He said: “He’s at his peak, he’s happy and he’s doing really well”. Honor Code’s off-the-pace running style will be compromised due to the scratch of Beholder, but he has one edge on the other off-the-pace runners in the race-his turn of foot.
This year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic features American Pharoah taking on another test to prove greatness facing older horses for the first time in his career. “May the best horse win”. I try to sit right next to him.
In fact, there will be an element of mourning for the entire Zayat Stables, with Justin echoing such sentiments.
“If we hadn’t scoped her, we wouldn’t have known anything was wrong, and we would have run”, Mandella said. “I think (Keen Ice) is the best of the 3-year-olds other than American Pharoah, and it’s just a matter if a horse can run American Pharoah early or not to give us a chance to win”.
Baffert thought American Pharoah was fit to keep racing. The gelding scored his biggest career victory in the $300,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap (G3) April 9 at Oaklawn.
So can he go out with a bang?
Many online horse racing books won’t set their official odds until a day before the race, but many licensed providers have published projected odds for entertainment purposes.
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I want him to win an unbelievable race for Pharoah, he said, to go out in a way that we always remember him as a brilliant, kind horse..
