Animal Kingdom: To Move or Not to Move?
Shortly after the result of last Saturday’s Gulfstream
Park Handicap was made official, the grumbling began.
Joel Rosario moved too soon on Animal Kingdom, the
bloggers and Facebookers whined. Had the young jockey just let the 2011
Kentucky Derby winner run his race — rate off the pace and make one sustained
run — surely he’d have won or, at the very least, run much better.
Jockey John Velazquez, rider of the race winner Point of
Entry, added to the social media uproar when he noted that Rosario probably would
have beaten him home had the jockey “waited behind me.”
“He made a move so big that he changed his style to my horse’s style, so it worked out to my advantage,” Velazquez said.
“He made a move so big that he changed his style to my horse’s style, so it worked out to my advantage,” Velazquez said.
Graham Motion, trainer of Animal Kingdom, echoed
Velazquez’s sentiments on my
latest podcast.
“Look, I’ve spoken with Joel [Rosario] since the race;
I’ve spoken with Johnny [Velazquez] since the race,” Motion told me, “and Joel
has basically admitted that he kind of got coaxed into making a premature move.
“Johnny Velazquez is a very smart rider,” Motion went on.
“He knows my horse very well — just as well as he knows Point of Entry. And if
you notice when they turned down the backside he moved out almost to the middle
of the track and kind of lured Joel into that spot [along the rail].
“I think, really, we got outsmarted by Johnny knowing
both horses really well,” the veteran trainer concluded.
I don’t know.
Look, I respect Motion’s opinion — he came across as very
upfront and honest on my show — but Velazquez’s comments can be taken with a
grain of salt, especially if he’s aboard the son of Leroidesanimaux in Dubai,
the site of the Animal Kingdom’s next start in the $10 million World Cup.
Remember, Velazquez rode Animal Kingdom to his biggest
victory (as well as the horse’s only out-of-the-money finish when he broke
tardily for the second time in a row and finished a badly-beaten sixth in the
Belmont Stakes... no word as to whether or not Rosario gave him any advice
afterwards) and I’m sure he’d like to trump that in the World Cup.
But regardless of the motives, given the pace scenario
and the horses involved, I just don’t think it would have mattered whether
Animal Kingdom waited to make his bid or not. The fact is he’s made numerous
bold moves from the first call to the second call with no ill effect.
In the Spiral Stakes, he went from seventh, trailing by 4
¼ lengths at the half-mile call to fourth, trailing by 2 ¼ lengths, as the
field turn for home. In the Kentucky Derby, he rallied from 12th, 6 ¼
lengths back, at the first call, to fifth, a mere 2 ¾ lengths in arrears at the
second (granted, more distance was covered in that instance).
In fact, only twice in his entire career has Animal
Kingdom failed to gain at least one
position from the first call to the second call and that was in his second
lifetime start and last year's Breeders’ Cup Mile.
What’s more, if you look at the speed and pace figures
for both Point of Entry and Animal Kingdom, it’s hard not to conclude that
Point of Entry is simply a better horse, at least on the lawn.
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Saturday (02/16/13)
Aqueduct (AQU)
Beulah Park (BEU)
Gulfstream Park (GP)
Hawthorne (HAW)
Sunday (02/17/13)
Aqueduct
Gulfstream Park
Santa Anita
