I’ll be honest, my first reaction when I saw the Travers was “wow, who is beating him”...that was incredible.
That WOW aside, and granting that it will take a big performance to beat him, my heart is still with Honor A.P....and so is my brain. I’ve been a huge fan of his since his debut, and up until the Shared Belief, he’d done nothing wrong. I thought he would win that race even at 85%, but what I feared would happen based on his works happened ..Shirreffs undertrained him and he was dull. He wasn’t as eager to run on in his works as he usually was, and I think it’s because he hadn’t been asked for any speed at all. I’ve seen him train, he’s always fighting to go faster. Anyway, he was undertrained and then got banged at the start. I actually think the figures don’t tell the story - I don’t think he ran that well despite the race coming up fast. I do think it’s encouraging that he didn’t give up....hey, you take the positive where you can find it.
I think HAP will thrive at 1 1/4. I do understand anyone thinking Tiz is unbeatable, but I don’t get why all of a sudden Honor A.P. is yesterday’s news while Art Collector is all the rage. I love AC, this has nothing against him....I just personally think Honor A.P. is better than him, and it’s not that close.
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