We’re all still talking about the brilliant world champion – but as the seventh edition of the Pegasus World Cup heaves into view, Nicholas Godfrey laments the relative lack of star performers set for the January 28 highlight at Gulfstream Park.
And so we approach what is only the seventh running of the financially diminished Pegasus World Cup. Good enough to keep Cyberknife in training for one last hurrah but not good enough for Flightline, perhaps the only horse the wider US public might have heard of.
Okay, maybe I’ll give you Rich Strike and Cody’s Wish, but they aren’t running either, and they haven’t been retired. Neither, for that matter, have Dubai World Cup winner Country Grammer or stablemate Taiba, who are both chasing other, bigger riches.
Flightline, though, has gone to stud, the soon-to-be Horse of the Year having become the latest embodiment of the sport’s dismal paradox: a racehorse that is too valuable to race. He isn’t the first; he won’t be the last.
Under those circumstances, maybe even the $16 million on offer at the Pegasus prize-money zenith in 2018 would not have been persuasive enough for one last spin around the fair, to turn Flightline’s six runs into seven.
That figure was certainly enough for Cyberknife’s estimable sire Gun Runner, who duly signed off from racetrack duties with his sixth G1 win in the second Pegasus, just as the $12m up for grabs 12 months earlier had been enough to tempt California Chrome for one final unavailing crack at Arrogate in a one-sided affair.
Now the race is worth ‘only’ $3m – nowhere near enough for a horse like Flightline, whose sky-high stud valuation means he would have been nigh-on impossible to insure for racing purposes. Or, to put it another way, nobody could risk the colt continuing to do the very thing for which he was so expertly bred and raised.
At $200,000 a pop, it is to be hoped the newly crowned world champion racehorse is equally adept at his second career. Even if he is, such a hasty departure from the racetrack will be keenly felt by those naive souls who favour horse racing above what a charming former colleague of mine used to describe – in an elegant turn of phrase. I’m sure you’d agree – as horse shagging.
One is a spectator sport, part of the entertainment business; the other is not. Or maybe I’m wrong, and Lane’s End have missed a trick here by not offering tickets to witness Flightline’s first effort in the covering barn. One can only imagine the clamour on Viagogo for resales; the touts would have a field day.
Back to the Pegasus, which is not a bad race by any means – Cyberknife en route to stud at Spendthrift and Godolphin’s Proxy prepping for the Middle East – though hardly any meaningful progression from the old Donn Handicap, the Gulfstream Park contest whose G1 status was so adroitly nabbed by Pegasus organisers.
Can it really be just over half a decade since American racing’s gaudy new bauble was launched with no little fanfare (and no little lucre) to reinvigorate the US winter scene?
Well, say what you like about the Pegasus but no one could accuse it of standing still since the imperious Arrogate treated a top-class field with such disdain in January 2017.
That was the world’s best horse seeking the world’s biggest prize. So much has changed since that ground-breaking inaugural contest at Gulfstream Park that neither superlative will be anywhere near the truth of Saturday’s race.
The Pegasus purse was blown out of the water by the $20m Saudi Cup for 2020. The current Pegasus purse of $3m is only half that of North America’s richest race, the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Defunded would be an appropriate winner for the man very few now refer to as ‘Uncle Bob’ Baffert.
Belt-tightening can only affect the quality of the field, of course, and the Pegasus has morphed into a vastly different beast since its initial splash. As such, some years will be better than others. Lest we forget, in 2019 the Pegasus meant City Of Light stayed on for one more run following the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, while the final run of Knicks Go before stud came in last year’s race as he tried to defend his crown against Life Is Good. The concept still works, sometimes.
Still, while the Pegasus was always a more domestic than an international affair, the odd overseas contender has added a bit of interest to the card in the past with the likes of European-trained Toast Of New York and Magic Wand. Not now, unless you count a couple of Chilean imports who may conceivably not be lapped.
Such a diminution may satisfy those critics who looked askance at the entire Pegasus concept as a nouveau riche vulgarity when it started out with an exorbitant pay-to-play entry structure, asking owners to stump up the small matter of $1m for a place in the starting gate.
Anyone eager to accuse Gulfstream owner Frank Stronach that his new love child reeked of hubris need look no further than the car park, where they were greeted by a colossal bronze statue of a gigantic winged horse killing a dragon. As tall as an 11-storey building and said to be the second largest statue in America after the Statue of Liberty, ‘Pegasus and Dragon’ reportedly cost $30m to construct. Weighing in at 473 tonnes for Pegasus and 242 tonnes for Dragon, it sits in its own park, which is rarely open.
That much-advertised entry structure always felt flawed – why spend $1m to get kicked into touch by Arrogate or Gun Runner? Unsurprisingly, it was abandoned after a couple of years.
On the plus side, the Pegasus card as a whole has been beefed up with a couple more G1s alongside some half-decent supporting events. They also led the way with regard to Lasix-free racing, offering weight breaks to horses who raced ‘clean’.
What is more, virtually on its own the race has put Gulfstream Park back on the world map. Located behind the high-rise hotels and condominiums on the Atlantic coast at Hallandale Beach, about 17 miles north of Miami's downtown district and halfway between the city and Fort Lauderdale, the famous Florida venue used to be a regular Breeders’ Cup site, hosting the championship three times before the turn of the century.
This is where Sunday Silence and Easy Goer fought it out one last time, where Baffert had his first Breeders’ Cup winner (Thirty Slews), where Frankie Dettori did a flying dismount on Daylami and where Zilzal got stuffed.
Yet nowadays Gulfstream gets a bum rap, on the whole, from old-timers who suggest the place has been desecrated. But I don’t know what they’re talking about – if there’s a more attractive casino in the whole of Florida, then please tell me about it (PS - please don’t tell me about it). With the simulcast, you don’t even need to go out front to see a horse and interrupt your session on the slot machines.
Now what was once a showpiece venue is again a showpiece venue – thanks to the Pegasus, which has quickly become a fixture on the Miami social calendar. That’s what they wanted in 2017 so in that crucial respect, it has already done its job.
Yet for all that, the simple fact is that after just seven years, the Pegasus plainly isn’t what it was. Its wings have been clipped, and even the race’s most profound apologists would be forced to agree that on paper this doesn’t necessarily look one of the better renewals.
But, y’know, it’s doin’ all right, and the reduced $3m event remains a worthwhile attraction, even in its current guise as ‘just another Grade 1’. They love it in Florida, even if it means less on a wider basis than it did way back in 2017.
The (recent) past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. And let’s be completely fair on this subject. For a few dollars more – well, a few million – they might have snared a couple out of Rich Strike, Cody’s Wish, Country Grammer, Taiba etc, though it is far from certain.
But whatever dollar amount was on the table, they probably would have struggled to get Flightline to go around again, even for a lavishly endowed lap of honour. After all, he has gainful employment elsewhere these days.
• View previous articles in the View from the Rail series
Geir Stabell: Get rid of the whip and you get rid of the problem
Charles Hayward: No looking back – HISA is the only way forward
‘Flightline was a remarkable horse, a blessing’ – trainer John Sadler on the world champion
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