Baffert and the Spa
 

I doubt we ever see Baffert ship a stud 3 year old to Saratoga..Brutal
Point Given was a monster and was getting better...
Many may disagree but PG was every bit as good as AP..

I was going to start a thread on this but you beat me to it. IMO, Point Given is the better horse. I am a little biased here. My two biggest win bets of all time were Risen Star and Point Given both in the Belmont. I thought Point Given was a little short going into the KD having had only two preps. Even being a short horse, I still think he would have won the Derby had Stevens gave him a better ride. He was way to close to those suicidal fraction of 44.4 and 109.1. Had Stevens put Point Given where Monarchos was we would have had a triple crown winner and quite possibly could have equaled or beaten Secretariat's time.

Also, Victor said the three weeks between starts played a factor. There was 27 days between the Haskell and the Travers for AP. When Point Given won both there was only 20 days between starts. Aug 5-25. That one week is huge. I wonder if AP would have even tried the Travers had there been only 20 days between starts.

Had Point Given not gotten hurt we could have been talking about comparing him to Spectacular Bid on the best horses to not win the triple crown in the past 40 years.

Stevens to this day says he's still sick that he lost the Derby with Point Given. He should've been a Triple Crown winner and he was a monster. One hell of a horse. I'd have to agree, better than AP.

PG WAS better than AP.

Noooo, I doubt we'll be seeing much of Bob over at the SPA. :lol:

From reading and listening to post race comments...

I dont think Baffert wanted to run in the Travers

I have a very close friend who has worked for Baffert for over ten years. Baffert himself admits he doesn't do as well on the east coast since he shut down the division he used to keep with John and Tonya Terranova.

Not according to Zayat...according to Zayat, Bob wanted to run more than Zayat did...

And it's such nonsense to think Baffert will never ship a good 3yo to Saratoga again...

What's brutal about finishing 2nd in the Travers?

I'll tell you what was BRUTAL...losing the Derby with Cavonnier...but that never stopped Bob from going back to Churchill... :lol:

Nothing he ran his race

It sounded like a spin job to me. For weeks Baffert was giving the impression he didn't want to run whileZayat has been saying he wanted to go to Saratoga. Suddenly when the horse loses , it was Baffert who wanted to run. That's hogwash.

What is there to spin? The horse ran well in defeat and finished second. If horse racing weren't so screwed up, this wouldn't be seen as such a tragedy.

And Zayat never said in hindsight he didn't want to go. He was responding to a baiter when someone told him he "should have listened to Bob"

Zayat replied that Bob wanted to go even more then Zayat did...not that Zayat didn't want to go...big difference...

Point Given lost by too big of a margin in the Ky Derby for me to believe that just the pace did him in. He didn't quite have it that day. Congaree was closer to the early pace than Point Given and finished well ahead of him.

Point Given was not an easy horse to ride whereas American Pharoah looks like one of the easiest mounts that I've ever seen.

Point Given probably had more stamina.

If the pace was Point Given's excuse in the Derby (and I agree it was brutal and he did run very wide into it), then Congaree was also a monster in that race and may have beaten him that day anyway if the pace wasn't extreme.