Bob Baffert is confident that his superstar colt Arrogate will handle the dirt track at Meydan ahead of his Dubai World Cup bid on Saturday.
Arrogate, who’s around a 1/3 shot to win the Group One race with a total prize fund of over £8 million for the one mile and two furlong contest, has progressed rapidly for Baffert.
The four-year-old son of Unbridled’s Song was a half-length winner over California Chrome in the Grade One Breeders’ Cup Classic in November, before the Juddmonte Farms Inc-owned gelding was an impressive four and three-quarter lengths winner of the world’s richest race, the Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes at Gulfstream in January of this year.
He now heads to Meydan as a warm order for this contest which Arrogate’s trainer has won twice, courtesy of the successes of Silver Charm (1998) and Captain Steve (2001) when the race was run at Nad Al Sheba.
Baffert remarked:
It is a good surface. It is soft and they get over it well. He has run on it all. I have worked him over muddy, whatever. He takes it in his stride. If he shows up, and is doing well he will run well. I’ve never won it here (at Meydan), and it’s totally different. I really liked that old track (Nad Al Sheba), but this is totally different (with) tighter turns. You need a lot of racing luck to get away from the gate. It becomes a jockey’s race.
And you never know until they start turning for home – is the horse going to show up? As a trainer, you’re just hoping that at the quarter pole, they’re moving. It was a gut decision to bring him here. A horse like him, if I run him here and he is doing well I can freshen him up for the fall [autumn] racing so he will get a well deserved vacation after this.
