No doubt about last weekend’s headline performance: step forward Nysos, who maintained his unbeaten record with another runaway victory at Santa Anita on Saturday [Feb 3].
In beating his stablemate Wine Me Up by an easy 7½ lengths in the G3 Robert B Lewis Stakes, the son of Nyquist was recording his third victory – all of them achieved in commanding fashion by a cumulative margin of nearly 27 lengths.
Sent off a 1-10 shot, this was Nysos’s second G3 win after the Bob Hope at Del Mar in November, earning a huge 304pt boost on Thoroughbred Racing Commentary’s Global Rankings, where he enters the Top 100 at #80.
You couldn’t really ask for a lot more as Nysos cruised home to record a Beyer speed figure of 105 – clearly the highest of the new year by any three-year-old, four points ahead of Mystik Dan, eight-length winner of the G3 Southwest Stakes at a muddy Oaklawn.
“I love the fact that he has speed and he proved he can do two turns,” commented trainer Bob Baffert (stays at #4 on the trainers’ list), who was winning the race named after the owner of Silver Charm for the sixth consecutive year.
“He has a great mind – he is a really good colt,” added Baffert. “You can just sit there and push the button at any time. It makes it so much easier for the riders, but I still get a little nervous.
“I liked the way my other horse was running because I thought he was going to run a big race today. Deep down inside I thought if he [Nysos] is a good horse he’s going to get it done, and he did.”
Under normal circumstances, Nysos would likely be clear favourite for the Kentucky Derby. But these are not normal circumstances, of course, and as it stands Nysos won’t be able to run at Churchill Downs because his trainer is still prohibited from making entries at the venue following in the light of the Medina Spirit controversy.
Unlike the last two years, last week it was announced Baffert’s three-year-olds will not be switched ahead of the Kentucky Derby – so the most probable plan for Nysos looks set to be Santa Anita Derby followed by the Preakness Stakes.
Nysos’s victory held significance in other sectors of the TRC Rankings, where jockey Flavien Prat (+31pt, #3 from #4) now sneaks ahead of reigning Eclipse Award winner Irad Ortiz. Prat is enjoying a highly successful start to 2024, with a series of Graded wins at Santa Anita – plus the small matter of the Pegasus World Cup on National Treasure.
Nysos’s sire Nyquist (+51pt, #10 from #13), himself a Kentucky Derby winner in 2016, has also moved into the world top ten among dirt sires.
Elsewhere, Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Fierceness fluffed his lines on his seasonal debut in the Holy Bull at Gulfstream Park. Pinballed at the break, the 1-5 shot made up ground three wide down the back stretch but came up empty in the closing stages before finishing a well-beaten third behind Hades (Joe Orseno/Paco Lopez).
“Disappointed in the outcome,” said Fierceness’s trainer Todd Pletcher. “I think if you watch the replay of the start, it was a pretty rough start, kind of similar to what happened in the Champagne. If he doesn’t get away well, he doesn’t get into the flow of the race the same way.
“We know he’s better than that, so we’ve got to regroup a little bit and do better next time. He’s shown that he can recover from a subpar performance with a good one.”
• Unlike traditional methods of racehorse rankings, TRC Global Rankings are a measure of an individual’s level of achievement over a rolling three-year period, providing a principled hierarchy of the leading horses, jockeys, trainers, owners and sires using statistical learning techniques. Racehorse rankings can be compared to similar exercises in other sports, like the golf’s world rankings or the ATP rankings in tennis.
They are formulated from the last three years of races we consider Group or Graded class all over the world and update automatically each week according to the quality of a horse’s performances and their recency, taking into account how races work out.
• View the latest TRC Global Rankings for horses / jockeys / trainers / sires
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