He's physically matured a lot. Mentally, he's become much more professional in his races than he was earlier in the year, ... I think now he's kind of the complete package. |
He's right where we want him to be for his first start, and we expect him to run well Saturday without running his absolutely best race. The ideal scenario is for him to keep improving and to have him ready to peak on the right days later on. |
He's trained very well and he is doing really well. |
He's training really well, he looks good, and I think he's going to run a good race. |
His best distance is probably a mile-and?an-eighth to a mile-and-a-quarter. It's good to see that we can stretch him out from here. |
His most impressive races in Chile were on dirt, so we decided to take a shot in the Cigar Mile and obviously it just didn't work out. It was probably the wrong time to do it following the Breeders' Cup. |
Horses get injured, and that's part of the game. But the ones who are showing up are the very best out there. You really can't find any slouches in this bunch. |
How much it affected his performance I don't know. |
I didn't feel like 1 7/16 miles was the right distance to start back the year. It's a long year; she hasn't run since the E.P. Taylor. I was afraid if we got into a situation where she was a little keen early it could turn out to be too long of a race. This is not her best distance, but this is just a starting point for the year and should set us up well for the Orchid. |
I don't think it's a problem, ... I thought she ran very well in the Sorority, and she'll be better for having two races in her. |
I don't think it's going to be necessary (to run Bishop's Court Hill), but we put him in there to keep that option available, |
I don't want to get in the way of Johnny with his Kentucky Derby mounts. This was a particularly hard decision, because anyone who works or trains or is around Keyed Entry knows how good he is. You'd want to stay with a horse like that as long as possible. He's undefeated. He's training super. In a perfect world, Keyed Entry would already have gone two turns, so Johnny could have made a better comparison with Bluegrass Cat. Bluegrass Cat already has been a mile and an eighth, and he's already been a mile and a sixteenth this year. I think it came down to that. |
I felt like if we can get this horse straightened away and focused and he matures, then he can be any kind of horse. |
I know everybody's going to say the rabbit was why we got beat; it had nothing to do with it. Flower Alley was too rank. Whether Bishop Court Hill was in there or not, he was too fresh on the day. |
I said, 'Man, this horse has got to have some serious ability,' |