Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – Sometimes the best effort isn’t always the one that results in the most lopsided finish in thoroughbred horse racing.<\/p>\n
Looking past the actual race will many times offer reasons to appreciate how a horse got to the finish line first, even if said horse only won by a narrow margin.<\/p>\n
On Friday at Santa Anita, Shared Belief came back to the races in his first start since getting fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic eight weeks earlier. By now we all know about the running of the 1 1\/4-mile Classic at Santa Anita and how eventual winner Bayern broke to the left at the start and impeded 5-2 favorite Shared Belief momentarily.<\/p>\n
“We put all that behind us,” Shared Belief’s trainer and co-owner Jerry Hollendorfer said Saturday. “There’s nothing we can do about what happened and so we forget about it and just remember that he’s a good horse and we came back and won, so I feel like he really justified himself today.”<\/p>\n
Shared Belief, ridden by Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, did come back with a gut-wrenching performance to win the Malibu Stakes over seven furlongs at Santa Anita. The 3-year-old gelding stalked the pace and had to swing wide around the final turn and into the stretch before fighting two other contenders and registering a neck victory.<\/p>\n
“He was sitting in a good spot,” Hollendorfer noted, “and he was in between horses, but really, I was watching and never had any doubts that he would get out and come running down the lane.”<\/p>\n
It was the kind of effort that showed Shared Belief knows where the wire is and does what has to be done to win.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if people really understand how difficult it is to go from a mile and a quarter back to seven-eighths,” Mike Smith said. “It’s really hard to do. It takes a special kind of horse; he’s that, and maybe more.<\/p>\n
“This race proved what a great horse he is, just by doing what he did. To run route races, then to come back to seven-eighths against top sprinters … To me, that puts a big feather in his cap and puts him in front for Horse of the Year. I think this put him ahead of the rest.”<\/p>\n
Being recognized as Horse of the Year is the ultimate honor in thoroughbred racing. For 2014, the three finalists may well end up being a trio of 3-year- olds, Bayern, California Chrome and Shared Belief.<\/p>\n
“I don’t vote on Horse of the Year, but all the other folks can take a look and see what they think,” Hollendorfer said.<\/p>\n
Shared Belief was the 2013 Eclipse Award champion as a 2-year-old and has raised even more questions about who should be 2014 Horse of the Year and champion 3-year-old.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes people are disappointed because he didn’t win by open lengths and think, ‘What’s the matter? Maybe he’s not all that (good),'” co-owner Jim Rome said after the race. “The horse just won a Grade I cutting way back (in distance) and did it with a lot of grit and a lot of moxie and I could not be more proud of Shared Belief. I love this horse.”<\/p>\n
Next up for Shared Belief is an expected rematch with Bayern and California Chrome in the $500,000 San Antonio on Feb. 7 at Santa Anita. That will offer the newly turned 4-year-olds a 1 1\/8-mile battle.<\/p>\n
“He’ll go back to Golden Gate … to train as usual, but we’ll look at the San Antonio, for sure. We’ll look at it pretty hard,” Hollendorfer said.<\/p>\n
By winning last week’s seven-furlong Malibu, maybe Shared Belief can at least be voted 2014 champion male sprinter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – Sometimes the best effort isn’t always the one that results in the most lopsided finish in thoroughbred horse racing. Looking past the actual race will many times offer reasons to appreciate how a horse got to the finish line first, even if said horse only won by a narrow margin. On […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}