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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Jockey Junior Alvarado, regular rider for 2025 Horse of the Year Sovereignty, is expected to return to action Feb. 5 at Gulfstream Park after being shaken up late on Saturday's Holy Bull (G3) program.View the full article -
Maybe they will boost stakes for Wyndham and no new date, but Wingatui must have dropped something to have Gore Cup, not much they can do about it. Sometimes Gore must come under some scrutiny. Best track they had in Southland probably was Winton, 18 or so harness meetings so what's the sense of the gallopers moving, not like the course is shutdown. -
2 nominations, then..........13 noms for 3 pacing races at Auckland, Wairio rating 50 to 70, how many ? But then also Sunday Horarata 46 to 70, programming all over the place, anything over rating 55 struggling.......strangely fields for Cambridge Wednesday generally good, I seriously wonder if going to Alexandra Park just don't appeal to many, prefer Cambridge.
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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
As we crest the three-month mark to the GI Kentucky Derby, the breakthrough performance by Nearly (Not This Time) in the Jan. 31 GIII Holy Bull Stakes raises several questions related to timing, taking into account both macro and micro perspectives. The first relates to the timing of Nearly's 5 3/4-length score over five rivals barely 48 hours after the news that juvenile champ and TDN Rising Star, presented by Hagyard' Ted Noffey (Into Mischief) had been diagnosed with bone bruising and was declared off the Kentucky Derby trail. Both Ted Noffey (owned by Spendthrift Farm) and Nearly (owned by Centennial Farms) are stablemates in Todd Pletcher's barn, and both colts have been regularly ridden by John Velazquez. Considering the lack of dominant, standout contenders in the sophomore ranks at this stage of the season, is it reasonable to install Nearly as the new No. 1, with his three-race win streak and best-in-2026 divisional Beyer Speed Figure of 98 good enough to leapfrog other highly heralded horses, several of whom are still awaiting their first starts as 3-year-olds? A second timing question projects forwardly: With Nearly tasked with only one more Kentucky Derby prep between now and May 2 (and with Pletcher indicating that single prep is likely to be the Mar. 28 GI Curlin Florida Derby), will a five-race base (with just two starts around two turns) be enough to establish this colt's credentials in a chaotic 20-horse race over 10 furlongs? Yet another timing question relates to the in-race clocking of Nearly's victory in the Holy Bull, which was the product of an exaggerated fast early/slow late pace. Nearly and 'TDN Rising Star presented by Hagyard' Cannoneer (Into Mischief), respectively, broke inward and outward leaving the gate, coming together for a mild “Ya wanna go?” bump before tearing off together into a sprint for the first turn of the 1 1/16-miles stakes. With both Velazquez and Irad Ortiz Jr. avoiding the rail like it was strung with barbed wire, the outermost Nearly (the 1.7-1 second choice) and inside-running Cannoneer (the 3-2 fave) dueled four paths off the fence through a first quarter in :22.82 before fanning out to lane six on the backstretch. After a high-octane second-quarter split in :23.14, the two dropped down closer to the fence for the far-turn run. Nearly began to edge away from Cannoneer at the 3 1/2- furlong marker, which under Gulfstream's short-stretch configuration for 1 1/16 miles (finish line at the sixteenth pole) means just three furlongs to the wire. By the 2 1/2 furlong pole, Nearly was pulling away in hand with Cannoneer being asked but not responding. By the quarter pole, Nearly was clearly in front and again shifting back out while bracing for the anticipated late move by the 5.9-1 Bravaro (Upstart). Bravaro had enjoyed a primo stalking trip, and as the torrid tempo slackened (third-quarter split of :24.36), the 2-for-2 New York-bred looked primed to pounce, with Tyler Gaffalione taking aim on what appeared to be a softened-up speedster who had survived a demanding duel. But Nearly would have none of that scenario. He required only mild urging from Velazquez to dig in for the drive, and although it helped that Bravaro's stretch bid never truly materialized, Nearly cracked the race wide open under his own power, padding a 1 1/2-length mid-stretch lead (fourth-quarter split of :27.10) into a 5 3/4-length winning margin, cruising home through a last sixteenth in a leisurely :7.10 for a final clocking of 1:44.52. The loss by Cannoneer, who faded to fourth behind Bravaro and the 40-1 Project Ace (War of Will), extended a decade-long rough go for favorites in the Holy Bull, who have now gone down in defeat in nine of the last 10 runnings. “We rode like a match race,” Ortiz conceded after getting off Cannoneer. Velazquez added that he didn't expect Nearly “to be that aggressive.” But, the Hall-of-Famer rationalized, “that's what good horses do.” Visually, Nearly scored style points and credibility for being directly involved in an intemperate pace and having enough oomph left late to seal the deal. But from a raw numbers perspective, you do have to wonder whether Nearly could get away with enduring such a fast clip at longer distances when faced with more robust competition and larger fields. Consider that the fractions for the first six furlongs of the of the two-turn, 1 1/16-miles Holy Bull (:22.82, :45.96, 1:10.32) eclipsed those set in the one-turn, seven-furlong Swale Stakes (:23.30, :46.52, 1:10.92) earlier on Saturday's card. You don't often encounter a same-day route stakes whose internal pace is that much faster than a sprint stakes for horses of the same age and sex. It's also interesting to note that in the Swale, the riders' roles were tactically reversed from what would occur two hours later in the Holy Bull: In the sprint stakes for sophomores, it was Velazquez who got pinned down on the rail by Ortiz, losing both the internal duel and the overall race. Recent history of 1 1/16-miles Derby prep races also suggests the Holy Bull pace was aberrational. Since 2022, there have been 65 points-awarding Kentucky Derby qualifying stakes at that distance. In only three of them was a first quarter-mile contested faster than the :22.82 in the Holy Bull. In none of them was the fourth quarter-mile split slower than the :27.10 in the Holy Bull. And in only one out of those 65 most recent 1 1/16-miles Derby prep races was the final sixteenth slower than Nearly's last half-furlong in :7.10. The Beyer team's assessment of 98 for Nearly's win in the Holy Bull means this colt now owns the top two speed figures for any 3-year-old so far in 2026. Nearly had earned a 97 Beyer when winning a scratch-depleted allowance/optional claimer over seven furlongs at Gulfstream Jan. 2. One caveat is that number-assigning in dirt routes can be tricky at Gulfstream-for the Beyer team or any other entity that produces figures-because there are often so few main-track races there for comparison, with turf and Tapeta now comprising the bulk of cards. Besides the Holy Bull, on Jan. 31 there were only three other dirt races at Gulfstream, and none of them were routes. Nearly's 97 Beyer from Jan. 2 had been earned on a day when there was only one other Gulfstream dirt race. It had been preliminarily been reported as a 96, but subsequently got revised upward one tick prior to Saturday's Holy Bull. For comparison, the best Beyers put up by any Derby contender in the 2-year-old portion of the 2025-26 campaign were the run of 98-97-97 earned by Ted Noffey when he swept the Grade I trio of the Hopeful Stakes, Breeders' Futurity Stakes and Breeders' Cup Juvenile. The post For Nearly, Timing Is Everything, In More Ways Than One appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article
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