Numbers Don't Lie. but They Can Be Perplexing
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MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 2021 NUMBERS DON'T LIE. BUT MEDINA SPIRIT RETURNS A WINNER IN SHARED BELIEF THEY CAN BE PERPLEXING Zedan Racing Stable's Medina Spirit (Protonico), whose GI Kentucky Derby title still remains in limbo due to a betamethasone positive, returned to the winner's circle with a wire-to-wire victory in the Shared Belief S. at Del Mar Sunday. The dark bay colt, sent off the 4-5 favorite, went quickly to the lead and was tracked by second choice Rock Your World (Candy Ride {Arg}) through a quarter in :22.52 and a half in :46.92. The two favorites were swarmed by longshots nearing the stretch as GI Santa Anita Derby winner Rock Your World drifted out slightly in upper stretch and Team Merchants (Nyquist) and Stilleto Boy (Shackleford) exchanged bumps, but Medina Spirit ran straight and true and powered home a one-length winner over the resurgent Rock Your World. Following an inquiry into the infractions in upper stretch, the stewards determined Team Merchants, who finished fourth, was responsible for the interference with third-place finisher Stilleto Boy and allowed Essential Quality overtakes Midnight Bourbon | Sarah Andrew the order of finish to stand. Cont. p9 The Week in Review, by T.D. Thornton If you like to sift through numbers, a few stand out from IN TDN EUROPE TODAY Saturday's GI Runhappy Travers S. card at Saratoga Race Course. GLYCON MASTERS GRAND PRIX RIVALS How about six Grade I stakes, whose winners all earned Glycon (Fr) (Le Havre {Ire}) captured the G2 Lucien Barriere Grand triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures? They weren't big-figure Prix de Deauville on Sunday. Click or tap here to go straight to blowouts either. Five of those ultra-competitive races were TDN Europe. decided by a half-length or less at the wire. Nine winning favorites from 13 races also catches the eye. As does the four-win performance by jockey Joel Rosario. But the most mind-boggling numeric notation from the summer's biggest day of racing appeared in superscript type for the chart for the Travers itself: The final quarter-mile of the length-of-stretch slugfest between 'TDN Rising Star' Essential Quality (Tapit) and runner-up Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow) was clocked in an astoundingly fast :23.15. Midnight Bourbon broke fluidly from the rail and immediately claimed the top spot. Yet it was Essential Quality, even after a slight stumble and bump at the break, who really seemed to be in control of the pace while stalking in second. Midnight Bourbon got away with relatively soft back-to-back opening quarters in :24.18 and :24.78--but only because the juvenile champ and GI Belmont S. winner allowed him to. Cont. p3 PUBLISHER & CEO Sue Morris Finley @suefinley [email protected] SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Gary King @garykingTDN [email protected] EDITORIAL [email protected] Editor-in-Chief Jessica Martini @JessMartiniTDN Senior Contributing Editor Monday, August 30, 2021 Alan Carasso @EquinealTDN Senior Editor Steve Sherack @SteveSherackTDN Racing Editor Brian DiDonato @BDiDonatoTDN Deputy Editor Christie DeBernardis @CDeBernardisTDN Associate Editors Christina Bossinakis @CBossTDN Joe Bianca @JBiancaTDN News and Features Editor In Memoriam: Ben Massam (1988-2019) ADVERTISING [email protected] Director of Advertising Alycia Borer Advertising Manager Lia Best Advertising Designer Amanda Crelin Advertising Assistants Amie Newcomb Kristen Lomasson Photographer/Photo Editor Sarah K. Andrew @SarahKAndrew [email protected] Round two. The morning after a wild stretch battle in the GI Forego S. at Saratoga, Social Media Strategist Firenze Fire plays with John Attfield, Apolinario Perez, Joanny Avila, Ramiro Fernandez, Justina Severni and Firenze the kitten. | Sarah Andrew Associate Producer Katie Ritz WHITMORE RETIRED 4 Director of Customer Service Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect), last year's Eclipse champion Vicki Forbes [email protected] sprinter, has been retired from racing after suffering an injury in Saturday's GI Forego S. Marketing Manager Alayna Cullen @AlaynaCullen AMERICA'S JOY DIES AFTER TRAINING ACCIDENT 8 Chief Financial Officer Ray Villa America's Joy (American Pharoah), a half-sister to Into Mischief [email protected] and Beholder, died following a training accident at Saratoga [email protected] Sunday. WORLDWIDE INFORMATION International Editor Kelsey Riley @kelseynrileyTDN [email protected] European Editor Emma Berry [email protected] Associate International Editor Heather Anderson @HLAndersonTDN Newmarket Bureau, Cafe Racing Sean Cronin & Tom Frary [email protected] 60 Broad Street, Suite 100 Red Bank, NJ 07701 732-747-8060 | www.TheTDN.com TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 3 OF 10 • THETDN.COM MONDAY • AUGUST 30, 2021 The Week in Review (cont. from p1) With Essential Quality on the prowl in ever-dangerous stalk mode under Luis Saez, Midnight Bourbon and Ricardo Santana, Jr. were permitted to milk the third quarter mile of the Travers even slower, to :25.53. This equated to a six-furlong split of 1:14.49, which theoretically should have afforded tactical advantage to the pacemaking Midnight Bourbon. Yet Essential Quality began to reliably uncoil a half-mile from home, and Saez never appeared rushed or panicked, engaging on the gray favorite's own terms by incrementally eroding Midnight Bourbon's open-length margin through a far-turn fourth quarter clocked in :24.32. After a 1:38.31 mile, Essential Quality pulled even outside of Midnight Bourbon upon cresting the quarter pole, and they brushed and battled in determined lockstep. Midnight Bourbon drifted slightly--the first sign that Essential Quality's overdriven torque was getting to him--yet Midnight Bourbon admirably remained engaged and briefly re-seized the lead a furlong from the wire. This is the type of deep-stretch fight that Essential Quality relishes and excels at though, and he purposely powered past Midnight Bourbon within the final 100 yards to prevail by a tenacious neck in 2:01.96 for 10 furlongs. Of Essential Quality's eight wins, five have now come by margins of a length or less. His 107 Beyer seems about right (two points off his career-best 109 earned in the Belmont S.). But to throttle up the tempo to :23.15 for the final two furlongs of the Travers borders on other-worldly. Was the first mile of that race really so relatively untaxing that Essential Quality and Midnight Bourbon could both uncork such a swift stretch kick? (The five Travers also-rans were non-factors throughout the race.) For perspective, know that no final furlong of the Travers has been run faster in the last three decades (Equibase maintains Travers charts dating only to 1991; TDN would welcome a deeper dive by anyone who has access to a more complete set of data). Between 1991 and 2015, only two editions of the Travers featured sub-:25 final quarters: In 1993, Sea Hero's off-the-pace score (aided by a too-fast-to-last speed duel) finished up in :24.90. In 2000, Unshaded's length-of-stretch reeling-in of Albert the Great went in :24.93. Quite a few elite horses won the Travers during that same time frame--Holy Bull, Point Given, Medaglia d'Oro and Bernardini among them. Yet the final quarters of all of their Travers victories ranged between :25.09 and :27.20. Something shifted in 2016, though. That's when Arrogate burst onto the scene with a 13 1/2-length Travers annihilation. He established a Saratoga track record for 1 1/4 miles in 1:59.36, and even though he had zero competition while drawing clear late in the lane, his final quarter mile was a blistering :23.84. TDN HEADLINE NEWS • PAGE 4 OF 10 • THETDN.COM MONDAY • AUGUST 30, 2021 In 2017, West Coast won the Travers while on the lead throughout, and he too joined the under-:25 club with a :24.37 final-quarter clocking. In 2020, Tiz the Law followed suit with a :24.53 Travers stretch run. Does Essential Quality's winning run, with its gaudy :23.15 final quarter, suggest the outer limits of a Travers trend that has been in the making? And what does it mean when only two horses in a quarter-century manage sub-:25 final quarters in the Travers, then all of a sudden, within a six year span, four horses accomplish that feat? Prior to Arrogate, General Assembly owned the Spa track record for 10 furlongs. When he established that mark in the 1979 Travers, the New York Times made it a point to report that AHis last quarter, when he increased his lead from four lengths to the final 15, was particularly impressing. He ran it in :24 1/5 seconds.@ Arrogate | Horsephotos Although it can be dicey to broaden the scope of comparison away from Saratoga and the Travers, it has to be stated that the ultimate benchmark for final quarter-mile proficiency in a 10-furlong dirt race is Secretariat's 1973 GI Kentucky Derby. He established a 1:59 2/5 track record that still stands, punctuating a tour-de-force stretch bid with a :23 1/5 final quarter (back SPRINT CHAMPION WHITMORE RETIRED when fifth-of-a-second timing was the standard). by Mike Kane So did Essential Quality (and Midnight Bourbon, for that SARATOGA SPRINGS, NYBSome 15 hours after he suffered a matter) unleash performances in the Travers that truly deserve career-ending injury, Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect) was being to be mentioned in the same breath as Secretariat's lofty Whitmore Sunday morning. Acting like he was quite ready to standard? run in another Grade I at Saratoga Race Course, the 8-year-old ATime will tell,@ could be a possible answer to that question.