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Originally Posted by classhandicapper
Baffert is handling him the way he should be. He picked up a few checks in CA stakes when he saw how weak the competition was and is now running him in the weakest spots he can find. He has earned around 140k with this horse!!! To me, that that was masterful handling.
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I find it rather inept handling. Running a maiden in a stakes race, no matter what the level of competition, is one of the worst things you can do to obstruct a horse's progression. And despite picking up minor awards in the short-term, Baffert and his owners (who forked out 7 figures for the colt) are now reaping what they've sown. Whereas Baffert is quoted as anticipating a run in the BC Juvenile, instead the horse shows up in a maiden race and can barely get the job done.
When horses start to tail off or doesn't perform to his expectations, that's when Baffert is at his worse. Instead of showing patience, he starts campaigning the horse like its expendable (see Officer after he lost the BC at odds-on). There was no reason to cutback the horse especially on short rest. The horse's progression was already on a shaky foundation.
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My original point was that if he could run an 85 Beyer in his maiden win and Princess Noor was toying with him in workouts, she had to be better than her upper 70s Beyer figures.
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I think you're putting too much stock into a team workout as an actual race situation. That work was almost certainly choreographed to a tee with the focus being on preparing Princess Noor for the BC, not Spielberg and his maiden special weight. The very fact that he was chosen as her workmate tells you the horse's status in the barn.
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She ran an 85 in the Juvenile Fillies after chasing much better horses than either Spielberg or the very weak CA fillies she was beating. So imo she proved she was clearly better than an upper 70s horse.
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Personally, I think using speed figures from also-ran performances as a measure of a horse's talent level is a risky proposition. There cannot be much confidence in saying a horse's best race was when it ran up the track.
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Is she actually the special horse Baffert claimed that's going to keep moving forward towards the top of the division or is she simply a slower 2nd tier horse that looked great in the mornings and against tomato cans?
I think that jury is still out.
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Didn't the BC Juvenile Fillies spell it out enough? She did not move forward in that race. Unless the 4 or 5 in front of her at Keeneland fade away, she can't reach the top anytime soon. And now she actually has some competition to contend with at home (Astute).
