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Originally Posted by ArlJim78
I get the impression that they were pushing Signature Move, having already made up their minds that he would be their derby horse. Instead of doing as Carl Nafzger would say "we'll let the horse tell us when he's ready".
it just looked to me like he didn't belong and wasn't ready for the Santa Anita derby.
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Its interesting to see how a horse's campaign can be derailed by a single misstep in management. At the time of the Risen Star, Signature Move was also being considered for the Robert Lewis back home at Santa Anita, which ended up having a 4-horse field (won by Crown of Thorns). But, with good intentions in mind, they thought the Risen Star was a better race because it gave him shipping experience and a race over a dirt surface.
Maybe the shipping to Louisiana had nothing to do with him developing a lung infection and like DrugS suggested maybe he sucks and would have gotten exposed in the Robert Lewis, too, but I wonder if the horse would still at the very least be a peripheral player on the Derby Trail if he had stayed in CA. I suppose will have to wait several months now to see if the horse can validate his early promise.
Guys like Bruce Headley and Dick Mandella take a lot of flack on these boards for not shipping their horses back East, but its easy to take a horse's general health for granted when cross-country transportion has become so easy to coordinate.