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Originally Posted by letswastemoney
Shirreffs is the most chicken trainer I've ever read about. He's afraid of a wet racetrack, facing males with a horse clearly capable of facing males, stretching out Zenyatta to 10 furlongs....
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John Shirreffs is one of the best trainers and most clever operators in the game. He doesn't own the horse, and he and stable manager Dottie Ingordo are simply trying to put Zenyatta in the best possible scenarios. You don't know what they and the Mosses are facing with her currently, and if they are going to have to nurse her through this campaign for reasons they don't need to discus publicly...
And you absolutely NEVER bring a big, heavy horse like Zenyatta back from a layoff on a wet, hard racetrack unless you are anxious for trouble. Ask Frank Brothers about running First Samurai on a sea of Gulfstream slop in the Hutcheson in his first start at three. He got into that record-breaking gut-wrencher with Keyed Entry and NEITHER were ever the same after that.
As it happened, the track at Churchill Oaks Day would have been OK for Zenyatta by the time that Distaff ran, but Shirreffs took the prudent course.