This was a very circumstantial race in a year when we've had many circumstantial Grade 1 races.
Basically, with the exception of Principle Secret dropping anchor yet again, watching the race was like watching a Merry-go-round.
Horses racing 1st, 2nd, and 4th through both the opening 1/4 mile and opening half mile, ended up finishing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd respectively. The 2nd place fiinsher 15/1 and 3rd place 36/1.They produced a $91 exacta and $1,752 trifecta.
Stormello had, what is widely considered the best trip in all of horse racing. Being loose on the lead, through very moderate to slow early fractions.
An ALW race won 30 minutes earlier by 12/1 pace presser AP Xcellent, at the same distance, featured fractions of 23.07, 45.76, and 1:10.02---all three of which markedly faster than the early fractions in the Hollywood Futurity.
The track really wasn't "speed biased" today---though, it was obviously yielding fast times. A track record was set in an ALW race, at 6.5 furlongs, by a horse who dueled for the lead. In a 25K claiming race later on, a horse just missed the same track record while winning in wire-to-wire fashion.
This was certainly a very sub-par running of the Futurity.
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