Is it worse being really wrong or nearly right?
If nearly right you can take heart in your process, but those tough beats really hurt. If you’re dead wrong you might wonder what the hell you were thinking, but at least losing doesn’t sting as much.
Last weekend at Gulfstream, Redland Rebels led three jumps before the wire and two jumps after it at odds of 9-1. That stung. Looking for a salve in three solid opinions this week.
Robert B. Lewis
Starting point: Beat favored Desert Gate.
Desert Gate hasn’t raced since Oct. 4 and has no speed-figure edge. Intrepido beat him, and Plutarch almost did. Desert Gate drew the rail Saturday and must show speed, and how often does an early developing 2-year-old with a five-furlong debut turn into a route horse?
Intrepido – we absolutely know he’s a route horse. He won showing speed, overcame serious trouble in the American Pharoah, and for all intents and purposes lost the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at the start. He works alone more than any of the other major players here. Don’t be fooled by modest breeze times: Intrepido always finishes fast and was especially eye-catching, I thought, on Jan. 31.
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Why not Plutarch? Only Intrepido and Desert Gate have beat him on dirt. His breezes won’t blow you away, but they’re good enough. Blinkers off, blinkers back on last year, surface switches, a tactical shift in the American Pharoah, and a horse who has lugged in through the homestretch – that is to say, Plutarch is an unformed work in progress.
While I could have taken either of those two, I’m going one notch deeper with Secured Freedom, whose 88 Beyer Speed Figure on Dec. 28 might prove the tip of an iceberg.
Sneakily, running like a horse who needed the race, Secured Freedom closed with interest and galloped out well finishing fourth in his debut, a launching pad to his powerhouse maiden win. And as well as Secured Freedom came home at six furlongs, his gallop-out, stride, and workouts suggest a horse who will improve at two turns. Secured Freedom typically starts his works a few lengths behind a lead horse, and he has grown increasingly professional and relaxed through his winter drills.
Bayakoa
With one major exception, the horses Nitrogen has defeated on dirt have since won a grand total of . . . zero dirt races. Nitrogen beat Scylla in the Spinster, and Scylla turned around and romped in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. There, Scylla broke an eight-race, 16-month losing streak while besting her previous top Beyer by seven points. Regaled, a half-length behind Nitrogen in the Distaff, winner of one stakes in her career, returned to finish fourth in the Falls City.
To me, the Distaff doesn’t match its figure. Nitrogen barely progressed over the last several months of her 2025 campaign and now returns from a three-month break on an interrupted winter training schedule.
I’m siding with her stablemate, Nerazurri, privately purchased early last fall and immediately stretched out from one-turn contests to a nine-furlong Keeneland race in which she was best. She’s 2 for 2 at Oaklawn and even with the cozy front-running trip last time showed ample spark.
Unlike her odds-on stablemate, Nerazurri possesses winter race-fitness, and while Nitrogen might have plateaued (that remains to be seen), Nerazurri has gotten better and better for the Casse barn. She’s at least three times Nitrogen’s price and surely not three times less likely to land the Bayakoa.
Ladies’ Turf Sprint
While Pennsylvania-bred Flamingo Way began her current form cycle at Penn National, hardly a hotbed of stakes prospects, it was not the venue but the racing surface that mattered.
The switch to turf racing, which began at Penn, has propelled Flamingo Way to unexpected heights. How high? If she’d found any room at all to run through the final 300 yards, she probably wins the Abundantia.
In September, Flamingo Way got a major class hike into open stakes company at Laurel, but tactics more than the competition got her beat. Flamingo Way, once a pace player, goes best when held up for one run, and at Laurel she stuck far too close to the pace.
Hold-up horses like Flamingo Way, especially in short sprints, require pace and luck. On paper, the Ladies’ Turf Sprint has plenty of pace. As for luck, cross your fingers and hope the new jockey can hit the gaps this time.
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