Bob Baffert | Horse Racing Free Tips

Bella Sofia Passes The Test, Gets Her First Graded Stakes Win

In a race that featured the winner of the Grade 2 Mother Goose in Zaajel and the Grade 1 Acorn in Search Results, it was Rudy Rodriguez's filly Bella Sofia, who had yet to compete in a graded stakes let alone win one, that brought home the victory in the Grade 1 Test Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. In only the fourth start of her career, the daughter of Awesome Patriot brings home her third win, adding G1 winner to her short resume.

At the start, Illumination and John Velazquez got out of the gate fastest, Luis Saez settling Bella Sofia in to her outside in second and Souper Sensational on the rail in third. Illumination was a half-length in front through the first quarter in :22.84 and then the first half in :45.70, with Souper Sensational on the rail briefly challenging Bella Sofia's position in second on the far turn. Saez and Bella Sofia maintained their position just off Illumination's shoulder as they approached the stretch.

With the Saratoga straight ahead of them, Velazquez moved Illumination onto the rail as Saez and Bella Sofia made a big run on their outside. Easily taking over the lead, Bella Sofia drew away from the field, crossing the wire 4 1/4 lengths in the front of Souper Sensational in second and Search Results in third. The final time for the seven-furlong G1 Test was 1:21.54.

Always Carina, Obligatory, Illumination, Zaajel, and Make Mischief rounded out the field. Find this race's chart here.

Bella Sofia paid $10.40, $5.70, and $4.00. Souper Sensational paid $10.20 and $5.00. Search Results paid $2.60 to show.

“I know we asked a lot. We're just happy to have her in the barn. The day she broke her maiden, she put everybody away impressively. She was training good.” Trainer Rodriguez said after the Test. “You know when you draw the outside, you pretty much just let the jockey figure out what they want to do. She broke better than anybody. I thought she was going to be out front when she broke that good. She was nice and comfortable and she was running very well for him and when he asked her, she was there for him.”

“She broke perfectly. We were looking for that spot right there to sit and make a run into the stretch. She did it so well and so beautifully. She came through the stretch pretty smoothly. I knew the one horse [Illumination] had some speed, so the plan was to break from there, relax and make one move with her. She's a pretty nice filly,” Saez said after his win on Bella Sofia.

Bred in Kentucky by Two Tone Farms, Bella Sofia is a 3-year-old filly by Awesome Patriot out of the Consolidator mare Love Contract. Trained by Rudy Rodriguez, she is owned by Michael Imperio, Vincent Scuderi, Sofia Soares, Gabrielle Farm, Mazel Stable Partners LLC, and Matthew Mercurio. With her win in the Test, Bella Sofia improves to three wins in four lifetime starts, all in 2021, for career earnings of $405,100.

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La Jolla, Graduation Stakes Headline Sunday Card At Del Mar

Stakes horses will once again double up for a Del Mar crowd, this time on Sunday with the presentation of the 81st La Jolla Stakes and the 70th edition of the Graduation Stakes. The races will go as the 6th and 9th races, respectively, on the shore track's 10-race program.

The La Jolla, a Grade 3 affair that carries a purse of $150,000, has drawn a half-dozen 3-year-olds for a mile and one-sixteenth jaunt on the Jimmy Durante Turf Course at Del Mar Thorughbred Club in Del Mar, Calif. The Graduation also has drawn six California-bred 2-year-old starters for its five and one-half furlong spin on the main track. It offers a purse of $100,000.

The Irish horse Cathkin Peak, owned by Sterling Stables, Nentwig, and CYBT, is a candidate to be the favorite in the La Jolla. A bay son of the Irish stallion Alhebayeb, Cathkin Peak raced once in his native land as a 2-year-old, then was purchased privately and shipped to California where he won a pair of races, including the overnight Eddie Logan at Santa Anita Park last December. He subsequently chased home the blossoming star Rock Your World in February's Pasadena Stakes, also at Santa Anita, then went on the shelf. This will be his first start in nearly six months, but trainer Phil D'Amato has put a series of steady works into him for this comeback.

Double L Stable and Natalie Baffert's Hudson Ridge hails from the powerful Bob Baffert barn and is a son of one of Baffert's Triple Crown winners, American Pharoah. The colt broke his maiden with a dead-head score in a straight maiden race at Santa Anita on May 1 and came back to win a pair of races after that, including the Cinema Stakes.

Two of the other La Jolla runners — Red Baron's Barn and Rancho Temescal's Zoffarelli and Yuesheng Zhang's Sword Zorro also first saw light of day in Ireland. The former will be making his U.S. debut in the La Jolla, while the latter owns a victory in the Singletary Stakes at Santa Anita on grass April 25.

The Graduation – like many 2-year-old races at this time of year – is a tough one to sort out with only minimal past performances to work with. Morning line maker Jon White could barely separate two of the runners, hanging Lovingier, London, and Zondlo's Rock N Rye as an 8/5 favorite, just a tick better than Lovingier, Beckerle, and Carrillo's Thirsty Always at 9/5.

Rock N Rye is a homebred by Always Thirsty who was a handy winner of a straight maiden race in his second start at Santa Anita on May 30 in his most recent outing. He's been training steadily for this return date at both San Luis Rey Downs and Del Mar.

Thirsty Always, also by Stay Thirsty, scored in his first start at Santa Anita on May 16, then shipped up to Pleasanton and captured the Nevin Stakes there on July 10.

Trainer Walther Solis conditions both juveniles.

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Here's the lineup for the La Jolla from the rail out with riders and morning line odds: Steve Moger's Stilleto Boy (Kent Desormeaux, 6-1); Gary Barber's Wyfire (Kyle Frey, 12-1); Hudson Ridge (Abel Cedillo, 5/2); Cathkin Peak (Juan Hernandez, 2-1); Zoffarelli (Drayden Van Dyke, 3-1), and Sword Zorro (Umberto Rispoli, 4-1).

The field for the Graduation lays out like this: Lovingier or Templeton Horses' Mr. T's Thirsty (Tyler Baze, 2-1); McMahon or Rudy's Trip to Spain (Frey, 2-1); Thirsty Always (apprentice Cesar Ortega); Rock N Rye (Rispoli); Moger, Burke or Estrada, et al's Northvale Road (Tiago Periera, 6-1), and Branch or Hill's Fowler Blue (Edwin Maldonado, 12-1).

First post for Sunday's card is 2 p.m.

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Hudson Ridge Looks To Stay Hot in La Jolla

Hudson Ridge (American Pharoah) carries a baby two-race winning streak into Sunday's GIII La Jolla H. at Del Mar, the second of two-lead up races for the GII Del Mar Derby Sept. 4.

The bay colt has yet to run a poor race going two turns on the grass and nearly got the job done going a mile at Santa Anita May 1, missing by a neck while dead-heating for the plce spot with next-out maiden scorer No Foolery Here (Carpe Diem). Encouraged by Abel Cedillo, trainer Bob Baffert entered Hudson Ridge in the May 23 Cinema S. going nine panels, and the colt responded with a 1 1/4-length defeat of the re-opposing Sword Zorro (Ire) (Zoffany {Ire}). The 9-5 chalk for a first-level allowance in Arcadia June 18, Hudson Ridge bested Flashiest (Mizzen Mast) by 1 1/4 lengths, the form of which was franked when the latter returned to upset the opening-day Oceanside S. July 16. No Foolery Here was beaten a neck into third.

Stilleto Boy (Shackleford) tries the turf for the first time Sunday afternoon. Having finished second to GII West Virginia Derby favorite Mr. Wireless (Dialed In) in an Oaklawn maiden back in March, the chestnut graduated the following month and most recently carried Jose Ortiz to a 4 1/2-length upset of the Iowa Derby July 2. The gelding was purchased by Steve Moger for $420,000 at last month's Fasig-Tipton Horses of All Ages Sale and is out of a mare that posted a record of 3-1-4 from 11 starts on the turf.

The post Hudson Ridge Looks To Stay Hot in La Jolla appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Voss: American Pharoah’s Hall Of Fame Induction Marks A Complicated Moment For Racing

To say the combined 2020/2021 Hall of Fame induction ceremony was surreal seems an understatement. The public gallery in the Fasig-Tipton pavilion was packed with people well before the 10:30 a.m. start time, as might be expected in a year that saw the first admission of a Triple Crown winner since 1981 when Seattle Slew was enshrined. Still spinning from the cancellation of last year's ceremony (and much else) due to COVID-19, people were “just happy to be here this year.”

It's appropriate that the ceremony is held with a day of racing at Saratoga as its backdrop – the pinnacle of achievement, recognized in one of the toughest places to win a horse race. It's supposed to be a pure moment each year to honor the very best accomplishments in our sport. This year, it was a cloudy one.

Indeed, the stretch run of the 2015 Belmont, which so many of us have seen over and over again, was played a few more times. The crowd stirred a little. Everyone remembered how they felt in the moments when Larry Collmus called those immortal words into his microphone: American Pharoah is finally the one.

According to the eligibility rules for the Hall of Fame, this is the first year American Phaorah was on the ballot to enter the Hall, and he got in on the first try, as he should have. But in the six years since his retirement, the men united by his accomplishments are no longer thought of as solely the engineers of racing's favorite history-making moment.

Bob Baffert saddled another Triple Crown winner, who was later discovered to have tested positive for scopolamine and had that test result buried by California regulators while he was on his way to winning the roses. He has had a slew of other therapeutic drug positives among his other graded stakes winners, followed by an apology, followed by the biggest scandal of all – a betamethasone overage in this year's Kentucky Derby winner.

The legal fallout from the Medina Spirit saga is still unrolling and probably will continue for many years to come. It's the public trust in racing that will suffer for far longer. In a sport that already had two black eyes from the 2018-19 California breakdowns and the 2020 federal indictments, Baffert has knocked us right in the kisser. Everywhere I've gone this year, non-horse people have asked me (with absolutely no prompting from me) about 'why the white-haired trainer doped that horse' or why he 'thinks he can get away with it' as Baffert and his lawyer went on a public relations blitz, making clear they would fight a disqualification. People who hadn't watched a race in years remember this one, and probably the last time you could say that about a horse race, it was the 2015 Belmont.

Ahmed and Justin Zayat look on as a highlight reel of American Pharoah's career plays on the monitors at this year's Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Photo by Joe Nevills

Ahmed Zayat ran through the money American Pharoah won him with dizzying speed and took out $23 million in loans barely a year after the horse crossed the wire in the Belmont. He had run out of money to prop up his racing operation, telling MGG Investments he was already in debt and wanted to buy more horses. At the start of last year, MGG took Zayat to civil court, claiming he had not only failed to pay back that loan, but also that he sold breeding rights to his Triple Crown winner in violation of contract. Zayat has since declared bankruptcy, with a bunch of trainers and other horse industry professionals listed as his creditors – hard-working people who endured early mornings and bad weather trying to take care of his animals, people who now may not see a dime for it.

There's a tendency in horse racing – among fans and journalists alike – to cringe away from discomfort. It's human. When a person in racing does something we don't like, I hear people say they prefer to focus on the horse and the horse's accomplishments, laying to one side the problematic connections they'd rather not think about.

It is true, after all, that the horse can't choose his or her connections, and I, like many people in this sport, am in this because of my fascination with the horse more so than the people.

But I'll just say the thing I'm not supposed to say: it wasn't American Pharoah accepting a bronze plaque acknowledging his immortality on Friday morning. It was Ahmed Zayat.

Just as horses have no say in what their owners or trainers do, they also have no use for the accolades we do or don't give them. Becoming an Eclipse Award winner or a Hall of Famer will not change a horse's day. While I believe horses are highly intelligent, I also think they live in the moment; they are not worried about human constructs, for better or for worse, but the people around them will add to their own net worth with such honors.

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In American Pharoah's case, we were fairly warned. Zayat was sued in 2009 by Fifth Third Bank for allegedly defaulting on $34 million in loans, and then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for his Zayat Stables. Baffert's history of therapeutic violations prior to American Pharoah has been well-documented – so well-documented, in fact, that an animal rights activist who protested Friday's induction ceremony carried what I assume was supposed to be a poppyseed bagel. So was the 2013 investigation into the number of sudden deaths suffered by his horses in California, which were never completely explained but eventually blamed on thyroid medication Baffert was administering to horses who did not have a medical need for it.

The voting body (of which I am a member) could hardly have refused American Pharoah's enshrinement based on all this. His accomplishments were historic. But it's time to stop pretending that 2015 was a fairy tale, and that this moment isn't a complicated one.

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