By T. D. Thornton
Saturday's pair of Grade I dirt routes for 2-year-olds solidified intriguing subplots while establishing the three likely favorites for the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile.
Undefeated 'TDN Rising Star' Cave Rock (Arrogate) cemented kingpin status with a thorough shellacking of the GI American Pharoah S. field at Santa Anita.
But fellow 'Rising Stars' Forte (Violence) and Loggins (Ghostzapper) might have delivered the more nuanced performances with their length-of-stretch slugfest in the GI Claiborne Breeders' Futurity S. at Keeneland, which supplied both colts with valuable race-over-the-track experience heading into the Nov. 4 championship race.
Unleashing a 104 Beyer Speed Figure in his two-turn debut while never once appearing close to being fully extended, the pace-controlling Cave Rock toyed with a field of unproven quality en route to a 5 1/4-length romp for owners Mike Pegram, Karl Watson and Paul Weitman.
But even trainer Bob Baffert–whose juveniles are so consistently dominant that a 1-2-3-4 finish by all four of his entrants in Saturday's Grade I stakes seemed like a ho-hum occurrence–noted post-race that even though Cave Rock “keeps improving,” the immediacy of the Breeders' Cup, the colt's momentum, and a bit of luck at the post draw will all factor in to how the Juvenile unfolds.
“Right now, he's what you need. You need something that's right now, that's going to be good within the next 30 days,” Baffert said. “This horse had to run like that to go to the Breeders' Cup.”
Cave Rock, who races with his head slung low in a style reminiscent of his sire, confidently dictated the tempo through consecutive quarter-mile splits of :22.96, :23.86 and :24.25, with jockey Juan Hernandez throttling back just a bit on the far turn before asking for a more serious (but hardly overdriven) effort in upper stretch.
Cave Rock widened his winning margin without facing a credible challenger, rolling through the home straight in a fourth quarter of :25.49 with a :6.49 final sixteenth for a 1:43.05 final clocking.
Cave Rock was building on a Del Mar MSW sprint unveiling that yielded a 101 Beyer, and his GI Del Mar Futurity victory, even though it represented a slight regression to 98, was admirable for the deep-stretch visual of this colt leaving the field reeling while looking like there was plenty more left in his tank.
The knock against Cave Rock going into the Breeders' Cup will be that his path to the Juvenile has been on the soft side, and that he has yet to encounter or overcome substantial adversity in any of his races. The horses he beat in his first two tries have sputtered as a collective 0-for-6 in subsequent starts, and three of his seven rivals in Saturday's American Pharoah S. were maidens.
Keeneland's short-stretch configuration for the 1 1/16-miles Juvenile (starting and finishing at the sixteenth pole) should theoretically play into Cave Rock's speed-centric favor.
But he will likely encounter significantly more pressure on the front end in the Breeders' Cup, and as Baffert said Saturday, the track layout for that distance is a “tough, you have to draw, you have to be lucky at Keeneland. That post position is going to be a big factor there.”
Being able to carve out fortuitous trips while negotiating 14 horses worth of traffic were career-advancement boxes successfully checked by both Forte (owned by Repole Stable and St. Elias Stable for trainer Todd Pletcher) and Loggins (carrying the colors of Spendthrift Farm in a 10-way partnership for trainer Brad Cox) at Keeneland on Saturday.
They earned 92 and 91 Beyers, respectively, while finishing a neck apart and 6 3/4 lengths ahead of the remainder of the field. (Fittingly, in a stakes sponsored by Claiborne Farm, the stallion Blame supplied the broodmare-sire exacta.)
Forte, like Cave Rock, will go into the Juvenile with two Grade I wins to his credit. But you can make a very credible case for runner-up Loggins being the “wiseguy” play in the Juvenile, because he uncorked the effort that was markedly above expectations.
Loggins, stepping up into Grade I company for his route debut off a MSW sprint win at Churchill, established strong early positioning near the inside amid a crush of first-turn traffic. He conceded the lead and looked well within himself while covered up in third at the fence on the backstretch run, then seized the top spot 4 1/2 furlongs from the wire–a bold move that at first had the look of being premature, considering the colt's relative inexperience and the presence of favored Forte building momentum from midpack.
Loggins confidently chugged homeward after consecutive quarters of :22.94, :23.42 and :25.27 before being accosted by Forte at the head of the lane. Forte had methodically picked off most of the pack with precision targeting through the far turn, but had been tipped outside for the drive with what appeared to be a full head of steam.
Forte and jockey Irad Ortiz, Jr., muscled in on the rail-running Loggins and Florent Geroux with one furlong left over the short-stretch configuration. But Loggins was not overtly intimidated and gamely responded by shoving back, even as Forte wrested a slight lead through a fourth quarter in :26.54.
With a sixteenth remaining, Loggins determinedly pulsed back ahead for about six jumps before Forte clawed back an incremental lead at the finish. They ran the last half-furlong in a lockstep :6.57 for a final clocking of 1:44.74.
“He's a young horse, and I had to start working really hard on him,” Ortiz said. “He started doing it little by little, but by the time I got there and hit the lead, he started acting a little green and laying in a little bit. I had to take a big hold of him the whole stretch. He didn't even let me ride him that well. The whole time I had to hold him [off of] that horse inside of me, take care of him at the same time as I win the race.”
Geroux saw it differently, lodging a foul claim that was disallowed by the stewards.
“It was a good race. I got squeezed a little at the eighth pole,” Geroux said. “[Forte] came in a little bit on me and my horse was shifting, and I think it cost me the win.”
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