After even-money favorite Flashback and 2-1 second choice Goldencents ran themselves into the ground in Saturday’s San Felipe, setting it up for Hear the Ghost to come with a rush and roar by them both late, Goldencents’ jockey, Kevin Krigger, lambasted the ride Julien Leparoux gave Flashback.
“I was surprised, as good of a rider as Julien is supposed to be, the move he made around the turn to make us have a dogfight all the way,” said Krigger. “That’s like committing suicide. To pressure a race like that, that’s not a favorite’s ride at all.”
Leparoux blamed his horse: “He just took off. He just wouldn’t do what I wanted to do.”
Flashback’s trainer, Bob Baffert, tried to put a positive spin on his previously undefeated colt’s second-place finish, beaten just a half length.
“He had a nice, tough race,” Baffert said, “and he got tired at the end, considering that he went so fast (:45.95, 1:09.94). But I think we learned a lot about him today. That’s what these preps are all about.”
Not quite, Bob, because there’s much more to these preps than education. Under Churchill Downs’ new “Kentucky Derby Championships Series” point system, winning one of the eight races in the so-called first leg, which includes the San Felipe, is much more important (50 points) than finishing second, third or fourth (20-10-5).
Those 50 points for a victory virtually assures a starting berth in the Derby field, limited to 20 starters, which puts a lot of pressure on the jock to get home first. And just as that pressure might have prompted Javier Castellano to rush Violence into a 1:08.85 pace in the Fountain of Youth, only to be run down late by Orb, so might Leparoux and Krigger have overreacted in the San Felipe, each refusing to let the other steal away to an easy lead.
Then there was the picture-perfect ride John Velazquez gave 2-5 favorite Verrazano in Saturday’s Tampa Bay Derby, displaying the confidence and sangfroid that got him into the Hall of Fame.
After winning his first two starts by a combined 24 lengths, Verrazano met several new challenges: 1) facing stakes foes for the first time, including Falling Sky and Dynamic Sky, the 1-2 finishers in Tampa’s Sam F. Davis; 2) trying two turns; and 3) racing over Tampa’s quirky surface, which had taken the measure of the previous seven Tampa Bay Derby favorites.
“We had a lot of variables he hadn’t seen before, and he seemed to handle them real well,” trainer Todd Pletcher said.
On the lead along the rail into the clubhouse turn, his head cocked to the side, Verrazano was eager to go, but Johnny V. eased him back to let Falling Sky take the lead, then swung him off the rail.
Now racing on the outside, Verrazano tugged his way to the lead down the backside, but then Velazquez eased him back again before finally taking command around the far turn.
From there home, it was just a matter of how much Verrazano would win by — three lengths, as it turned out, over 32-1 Java’s War, who finished with good energy for second — and while it wasn’t a Spend a Buck-type performance that left us gasping for air, the 50 points Verrazano earned punched his ticket to Louisville.