SUPER SATURDAY AT SANTA ANITA ENDS ON A SOUR NOTE

Mongolian Groom, front right(Benoit Photo)

This Saturday at Santa Anita, they ran Super Saturday, a series of races that ensure automatic berth into the Breeders’ Cup to be run there in five weeks’ time. Aside from a couple of questionable results, there was a fatal breakdown of a horse in the eighth race that had management scrambling to put out a hasty press release to counteract the hordes of hostile and negative press that is bound to follow. More on that later.

The Awesome Again Stakes should have been a relative cakewalk for the locally trained 1-5 favorite McKinzie, but he turned in a lackluster effort in the six horse field behind 25-1 long shot MONGOLIAN GROOM. Winning margin was an easy 2¼ lengths, so the son of Highball will now take his chances in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. The winner led all the way from the rail saving ground and inched away In the final furlong after urging from jockey Abel Cedillo. The horse has now won three times from sixteen starts, and is trained by the only Mongolian trainer on the grounds, Enebish Ganbat. He may now have to hire a publicist for the hordes of interviews he will have to do from curious hacks who know little about Mongolia outside of Genghis Khan, come Breeders’ Cup week. As for McKinzie, he will still get an invitation to the big party as he has already earned $1.2 million this year from seven starts.

Enebish Ganbat

Also on the card was the $300,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes for Fillies & Mares on the Turf, and the unexpected winner was MIRTH with Mike Smith aboard. Again the race only had six runners and the odds on favorite Beau Recall was beaten into second place by 1¼ lengths. The Brad Cox trainee was returning to California after taking down the Yellow Ribbon a month ago, and on retrospect maybe the race came too soon. However Mirth gets the berth in the Breeders Cup where she will be a massive long shot. She is a daughter of Colonel John and she now has five wins from sixteen starts. The front running mare went off at odds of 6-1 and is trained by Phil D’Amato.

Getting back to the tragedy, the unlucky horse was EMTECH, a three year old colt who was euthanized rather quickly after it was discovered that he had two broken front forelimbs. Watching the poor horse suffer as he vainly tried to walk after the incident was too much for the female writers in the press box who refused to look, and some were close to tears.

Santa Anita re-iterated the safety measures they have put in place recently, and we can only hope that those measures pay off, especially in the short term.