Quote:
Originally Posted by RolloTomasi
National Treasure is the west coast's answer to Verifying. A horse who early in his career had the look of an under-the-radar type that might blossom, but ultimately has no acceleration & has had umpteen chances to break out and has failed each and every time.
Having said that, considering the weakness of the race & the dearth of early pace, I think it's reasonable to land on this horse & presume he will head straight to the lead (especially having drawn the rail) to perhaps try to steal it.
However, just because the plan is to go to the lead doesn't mean he will accomplish it. The horse has never shown true front-running ability despite breaking well enough in all his starts. Even in his maiden sprint win he was actually outsprinted the first hundred yards before inheriting the lead.
In what seems to be an epidemic amongst HOF trainers, Baffert is slapping the blinkers on National Treasure for this. Makes sense in the face of the pace scenario, post position, & presumed tactical plan. However, Baffert tried blinkers on the horse previously in the BC Juvenile & the horse found himself further back than in his other previous races. To be fair, he did break from an outside post at Keeneland & eventually worked his way into a pressing position after about 5 furlongs.
Finally, this horse was a veterinary scratch from the San Felipe, thus he's missed a major Derby prep & obviously didn't get much of a break from whatever was ailing him so its hard to have faith that he's actually progressing at this point. Perhaps what he's shown so far is good enough if the favorite falters & Blazing Sevens fails to improve further from his ho-hum 3yo efforts.
Seems to have the requisite stamina but he's one-paced, usually loses position when the real running starts, and hasn't displayed much of a stretch punch in any of his races.
|
I don’t disagree with much of what you’ve written. Mage is the horse to beat, in my mind, but I have reservations about a smallish horse coming back in 2 weeks after such a big run in the Derby. So, I looked elsewhere. First Mission has gotten pretty ideal trips and not really sure he’s beaten much. I don’t like him at a likely short price. Most of the rest of the field doesn’t have the talent to stack up against Mage. I’m just not sure horses like Blazing Sevens or Perform or Red Route One will get the pace setup to win, Blazing Sevens being the most intriguing of that group.
National Treasure feels to me like Medina Spirit a bit. A horse who ran well while playing second fiddle to Baffert’s top horse (Cave Rock) as a two year old. He has disappointed so far this year. I think some of the problems you lay out in that last paragraph (losing position when real running starts, lack of punch in the stretch) are due to a delayed lead switch when he hits the stretch. He has lost position in his last two starts then gained some of it back once he switched leads. (In fairness, maybe this isn’t the type of horse you want to lean on too heavily.)
As a side note, I see DRF and Timeform seem to have the Federico Tesio as favoring closers. I’m not sure I agree. Yes, Perform won from off the pace (and is probably too slow to compete here or would need a pretty big move forward but we’ll see), but the 2 through 5 finishers were 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 1st for most of the race. The runner up (which the Tesio pace figs would lead you to believe ran a big race) came back to get pretty easily beaten by some OK (but by no means great) horses in the Long Branch Stakes.