{"id":10646,"date":"2013-04-26T16:02:13","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T16:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blacktypebugler.com\/?p=10646"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"oldbtb_99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/?p=10646","title":{"rendered":"Champ Experimenting With Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preview – California Grade III The Wilshire Boulevard<\/P>

When ranked number one in your division and exiting an admittedly disappointing seventh place finish as the close second betting choice, what is the logical next step towards redemption?<\/P>

If you are four-year-old Final Exit<\/STRONG>, the answer is to bounce back with a decisive surface switch to turf.<\/P>

Through seventeen career starts, the 2012 Champion three-year-old dirt filly has amassed a bankroll in excess of three and a half million dollars, winning ten, and finishing second or third in four others, all accomplished while dominating on the main track.<\/P>

On Sunday, however, the daughter of Dynaformer will face a testing group of accomplished turf foes in the Grade III Wilshire Boulevard. Out of the Seeking the Gold mare Heaven\u2019s Gate, Final Exit\u2019s pedigree suggests such a transition shouldn\u2019t be a herculean task, but her dam was winless on the surface, making just one start in a minor stakes at Portugal, finishing a non-threatening second as the prohibitive 1-9 favorite.<\/P>

Still, with eight siblings to race, all winners, including a pair of graded stakes winners, and five stakes winners, one would assume that there must be supporting evidence of turf potential on the dam side.<\/P>

In reality, of those eight siblings, seven tried turf at some point, and only three had any success at all. Though Spanish Sky accumulated most of her career earnings on turf, she won just two of seventeen on the surface, a maiden win and an allowance win. Likewise, Standing Order also managed to win on turf, but was just one for seven on the surface, registering only a maiden win among a handful of defeats in claiming company.<\/P>

If there is a half-brother upon which Final Exit can hang her proverbial hat when speculating upon her potential on turf, Arbor Day fits that role. A son of Forestry with over $900,000 in career earnings, the winner of the Group III Winter Gin Special and the Group III Darling Fred Stakes amassed nearly all of those winnings on turf, registering thirteen wins on the surface and finishing in the top three thirty-one times from forty starts.<\/P>

The problem with using Arbor Day as the lynchpin to the case for Final Exit\u2019s chances on turf is that virtually all of his turf achievements were in sprints, with just a single win from eight tries routing over his career.<\/P>

The skeptics case against notwithstanding, there is ample evidence to support the opinion that she needn\u2019t be even nearly as capable on turf as she is on dirt to become undefeated on the grass course after Sunday\u2019s start. With five Grade or Group I wins accounting for her ten victories – including signature events such as the Grade I Darley, the Grade I lool Oaks, the Grade I Middle Jewel against males a la Rachel Alexandra, the Grade I Sister Hen, and the Grade I Breeder\u2019s Bowl Distaff \u2013 this isn\u2019t a filly that has earned her way by taking the path of least resistance.<\/P>

To that end, the first form of resistance in Final Exit\u2019s path to a successful turf debut is another four-year-old, number two ranked turf rooter Quality Buzz<\/STRONG>. Out of the maiden winning El Prado mare Buzzdrinksthebeers and by Elusive Quality, Quality Buzz tipped her hand in a debut win as a two-year-old on dirt in which she defeated, among other, future multiple stakes winner Vampire Stinger.<\/P>

Following a pair of losing efforts on dirt against winners after the debut, she transitioned to the turf course with aplomb, rallying from last to dominate her allowance rivals under a confident hand-ride. She quickly made her presence felt against better competition, running second in her stakes debut before rattling off back-to-back stakes wins in the Nexus Ribbon Turf Juvenile Fillies and the Full A.P. Turf Filly Mile, also her first two races around two turns.<\/P>

After a pair of third place finishes against similar competition having just turned three-years-old, Quality Buzz took the leap to Group Stakes company and didn\u2019t disappoint, winning the Group I Saint Larry, the Group III Chloe, and the Group I Colonial Downs in succession. The trio of consecutive wins not only marked her capacity to handle the elite class in her division, it also endeared her to punters that saw her speed ratings place her at the forefront of her peers by midseason.<\/P>

Unfortunately, following her eye-catching late rally to best fifteen others with a career best 112 speed rating in the Colonial Downs, Quality Buzz was sidelined with a respiratory infection that forced her to miss a little over two months just as she had peaked.<\/P>

When she returned in late fall, the connections opted for an easy spot, the mile and a half Lone Gunman Turf Filly Stayer against only three others. Sent off as the heavy 2-5 favorite, longtime Canadian hero and twenty-two year veteran jock Jean-Luc Hernandez found himself in a ten furlong wrestling match with the heavy favorite. Under instructions to settle off the pace as is customary for the filly, Hernandez tried in vain to keep Quality Buzz from dictating the pace as she eagerly broke to the lead and countered Hernandez\u2019 efforts to restrain her with a series of angry tosses of her head. <\/P>

The end result of the battle was defeat for Quality Buzz, who had expended most of her energy refusing her rider\u2019s requests. The unimaginable loss was ominous, even though it was intended merely as a prep, as she traveled back overseas for the Group I Vicky Oaks, was sent off as the favorite in a field of thirteen and never fired at all. Finishing eleventh, beaten nearly twenty lengths, the discouraged connections reconfigured their plans and shipped to Japan for some class relief, entering the Group III High Altitude. <\/P>

As luck would have it, torrential rains marred not only the barn area in Japan in the days leading up to the race, but it also wreaked havoc with travel, forcing Quality Buzz to reschedule her flight and arrive less than forty-eight before the race. Between the soggy turf course and the hectic schedule, the race became yet another disaster for Quality Buzz, who checked in eighth of fourteen.<\/P>

With three consecutive, well-publicized failures to close out her three-year-old season, along with a minor injury to her stifle, as well as the respiratory infection earlier, the connections nearly retired the filly in time for her to settle in away from the track in preparation for her second career. <\/P>

However, because she had been booked nearly a year earlier to Montjeu upon retirement, and with his untimely death the previous March, the connections were unable to settle upon a suitable replacement with Coolmore Tipperary on short notice. Instead, they impulsively shipped to South Africa while renegotiating a deal and figured at least a single win at age four would increase the value of her progeny. <\/P>

After several conditioned allowance races failed to fill, Quality Buzz was coaxed into the Group II Horse Station Stakes by racing officials. Sent off at 16-1 against a dozen rivals in the nine furlong race, the \u201cold\u201d Quality Buzz returned, rallying from more than ten behind to score a thrilling win by less than a length. Buoyed by her seeming resurrection, the filly returned to the scene of her most shocking defeat, the Group I Vicky Oaks, for a rematch with the filly that had defeated her that day, Jagged Lil Pill. Again falling far back, Quality Buzz uncorked her rally on the far turn, mowing down rivals one at a time through the lane, including Jagged Lil Pill near the wire. <\/P>

Unfortunately, she fell just short of victory, losing by less than a length to nine and a half furlong specialist Fiddle Dee Dee. But, she had run arguably as well in Victoria as she had in South Africa, and by all accounts, though unfortunate, the death of Montjeu may have contained a silver lining as it kept Quality Buzz in training just long enough to argue the case for her to remain in competition at age four. <\/P>

Though she hasn\u2019t contested the one-mile distance of Sunday\u2019s race since early in her sophomore season, she is two for three at a flat mile, and those races did mark a sudden transformation into an elite member of her class. Perhaps, given her recent history and current attempt to rekindle her status as a division leader, lightning shall strike twice, at roughly the same point in the calendar.<\/P>

Installed, somewhat surprisingly, as the morning line favorite, Lastpostonthebugle<\/STRONG> hopes to capitalize on the question marks accompanying several of the primary contenders and parlay that into her first win in nearly a full year. Though winless through her last eight starts, the four-year-old can\u2019t accurately be described as \u201coff-form\u201d as she has been second in six of those eight losses, three of which were registered in Group I and Grade I races.<\/P>

By Street Cry and out of Forewarned, by Dynaformer, the fifth ranked female turf router has been a fairly consistent force throughout her sixteen race career. With much fanfare surrounding her debut in mid-September of her two-year-old season, she was sent off as a heavy even money favorite going a flat mile and didn\u2019t disappoint, taking command early and cruising to a dominant victory.<\/P>

With something of a \u201ccult following\u201d before she even ran and then a powerful debut win to support that following, Lastpostonthebugle was confidently entered in the Group III Winter Gin Special for her second start. Punters seemed to approve of the decision, making her the 2-1 favorite in the ambitious choice for her first try against winners. Through the first three-quarters of the one mile event, their selection appeared en route to a perfect record through two starts. Near the three-sixteenths pole, however, she applied the brakes abruptly, backing out of contention and finishing a well-beaten fourth behind Tom and Pap. Though somewhat disappointing at the time, the defeat to that foe can now be viewed through a different lens as Tom and Pap has since established herself as a top five ranked divisional rival, a Grade I winner with over a million in earnings.<\/P>

She was subsequently given a chance at redemption against conditioned allowance fillies and made the most of it, winning easily, and with her confidence reasserted, won two of her next three, including her first stakes win and first graded stakes win.<\/P>

Throughout the remainder of her three-year-old season, Lastpostonthebugle was a nagging force against her peers, winning only the Grade II Celine Stakes, but finishing second five other times during the season. While it is tempting to take a dim view of the lack of winning efforts – runner-up finishes in the Group I Cremation behind the Irish 1000 Guineas winner, millionaire Sweet Princess, the Grade I Last Woman behind number four ranked older mare and earner of nearly two million, Mambo de Calle, a two-time winner of the race, and a half-length finish behind top ranked filly Stash Your Gold, also with nearly two million in winnings from nine career wins, three of which are Group I or Grade I wins – few others can claim to having run second to such a vast collection of the elite in her division.<\/P>

Her four-year-old season began just as her three-year-old season ended, with a runner-up finish in the Group III Kyoto Highway to the brilliant Miss Timoshenko, Champion two-year-old turf filly and winner of nearly four and a half million dollars from ten career wins, most notably the Grade I Breeder\u2019s Bowl Juvenile Turf Filly and Group I 1000 Guineas.<\/P>

Obviously, however, the concern is not that she lacks talent, but that she has become overly adept at showing the way to the wire until the last eighth of a mile and coming out on the bottom end of the exacta. Compounding that worry is that she enters this race after a very rare dud of a performance.<\/P>

Her three prior finishes that did not result in a top-two placing were always excusable – the aforementioned jump into the deep end in her first try against winners, a sixth place finish in the Group I Sydney Oaks at a distance (twelve furlongs) that was simply too far for her, and seventh in the Grade II Hall of Fame when she tried to face males, the winner having earned nearly two million dollars and the runner-up an earner of over four million having won multiple Group I races, including the Sand Castle Fee Duty in his most recent start – but the Lastpostonthebugle\u2019s most recent eighth place finish in the Group III Park Place Express as the betting favorite offers no such clear acquittal.<\/P>

Along those lines, six-year-old The Only Way<\/STRONG> is enigmatic as one of only three in the field with a Grade I or Group I win, taking the Grade I Breeder\u2019s Bowl Game in New York, a race with four multiple Grade I winners and four millionaires, but has recently been almost completely ineffective.<\/P>

In four starts since beating four rivals in an open allowance back in September with a stellar speed rating, The Only Way has finished in the top three just once, second in a field of four in a minor stakes with only a pedestrian double-digit speed rating. In fact, in two graded stakes during that four race span, she faced a total of nineteen rivals and managed to beat a total of three of those rivals.<\/P>

So, is she washed up? That could very well be the case, but her career isn\u2019t like that of several of her foes with clear trends of improvement and periods of peak form. Between her big win in the aforementioned Breeder\u2019s Bowl Game and the most recent win in allowance company, she ran twice and was up the track twice, with speed ratings that averaged out to a very ordinary 100.<\/P>

In fact, throughout her thirty race career, she has interspersed one or two eye-catching efforts resulting in a win, or near win performance, with an equal number of totally mind-boggling disappointing non-efforts. Bear in mind, this is a mare that won her second start in April after finishing second in her debut a month earlier during her three-year-old season and cautiously remained in non-two allowance company, losing her first six tries against winners while always between even money and 5-1 in that span. <\/P>

Then, in her final start at age three, The Only Way nailed that second career win, punctuated by three more victories in her next three starts, including her first stakes win in her first stakes appearance.<\/P>

So, being \u201cstreaky\u201d is nothing new to this mare. Consecutive losses have been a signature of hers, as have been consecutive wins. Mediocre speed ratings can be found throughout her career, as can be glorious speed ratings. Sure, her last several starts are cause for concern, but it\u2019s rather difficult to opine that those defeats are cause for panic. <\/P>

For five-year-old Lucky Stars<\/STRONG>, Sunday\u2019s feature is a return to the track at which she registered her last graded stakes win, a span of time covering nine races, sixteen months, dating back to her final start as a three-year-old. The implication isn\u2019t intended to demonstrate a complete lack of effectiveness at this level, as she missed the Grade II Black Betty here almost a year to the day by a mere neck and is exiting a solid runner-up in Japan\u2019s Group III Nakayama Lady last time out in which she actually registered a career best speed rating.<\/P>

Still, for a mare that earlier in her career assembled a string of races in which she won six of eight races with two second places finishes, the last eight are a pretty concise contrast. With just two wins in that span, a minor stakes win over just four rivals and a conditioned allowance win, even the majority of the losses are a bit discouraging. While second place finishes in the Black Betty Handicap and the big effort in the Nakayama last time rate as genuinely among her best races, the four remaining efforts in that span are at best average performances.<\/P>

Certainly her resume in the latter half of her career thus far is peppered with significantly more challenging spots than she contended with in the earlier part of her career. For that reason it would be misleading to suggest that she isn\u2019t as effective at this point as she was earlier. <\/P>

More accurately, it merely seems though she struggles to be consistently effective against the superior rivals she has faced in recent starts. There is little doubt that she has the chops to be a factor at this level, but there is considerable doubt that she can factor at this level with the regularity that would point to her as a primary threat in a field with several legitimate players in her division.<\/P>

In the same vain, while six-year-old Key To The Town<\/STRONG> has been able to notch six wins in the last two years, five of those wins have been allowance wins, three of those conditioned, while the fifth was a minor stakes win, albeit an impressive one in which she bested five graded stakes winners and uncorked a career best speed rating of 112.<\/P>

Of her seven other career victories, only three were stakes wins, two minor stakes and a lone group stakes win in which she desperately got up in time to take the Group III Park Place Express. For those keeping score, of her thirteen career wins, that works out to one Group III win, three minor stakes wins, three open allowance wins, five conditioned allowance wins, and maiden win.<\/P>

To be fair, if speed ratings defined ability and accomplishments, the daughter of Medaglia D\u2019Oro would rate fairly well with a few big figures and a handful or so that are in the realm of par for the more accomplished fillies in this field. Unfortunately for her, at this level, those numbers need to be accompanied by documented success stories against her better peers.<\/P>

In that context, she has appeared in graded or group stakes eight times in her career. Aside from the solid victory in the Group III Park Place, ironically her group stakes debut, she lacks a single other top three finish. In fact, in those seven other starts, her average margin of defeat is over eight lengths, twice fifth, twice sixth, once fourth, once eighth, and once thirteenth. To contrast that, in minor stakes races, she has three wins from six starts, with a pair of seconds, and a third place finish.<\/P>

Racing isn\u2019t exactly cut and dried and easily quantified by simple statistics based upon a single primary factor, but in this case, the clear disparity in success rate when facing graded stakes opponents versus success when facing minor stakes competition seems fairly substantive. A quick glance at Key To The Town\u2019s rather lengthy resume at this point paints a pretty picture of a talented filly that is capable of competing with excellent fillies on her very best day and will more often than not very effectively contain slightly less talented fillies. If you crunch some of the data as supporting evidence of the opinion, it only seems to convert that pretty picture into high-definition.<\/P>

If home field advantage were to decide the outcome, five-year-old Simple Girl<\/STRONG> would be 1-9 and on her way to the test barn at this very moment. Since making the transition to turf back in August of last year, the daughter of Deep Impact has started nine times on the surface, and since debuting on grass in Wyoming, she has left California just one time for a heart-wrenching neck defeat in the Gone Off Sake Turf Mare Route at British Columbia. <\/P>

Her other seven attempts have all been right here over this turf course and she has failed to hit the board just twice here, sixth in the Grade II Black Dahlia and seventh in the Grade I Motherly Love Stakes. Of course, of those five good race here, she has just one victory, capturing the ten furlong Timeclock Turf Mare Route over three competitors and registering the lone stakes win in her thirty-six race career.<\/P>

Ultimately, that reality essentially tells the tale of Simple Girl. Like several others in the field, she boasts ample talent and has compiled a solid resume, including $329,052 in earnings and six wins. Unfortunately, other than the maiden win on dirt way back in her second start at age two and the single stakes win back in October, her four other wins have all been either conditioned allowance wins or restricted allowance wins.<\/P>

Considering she was unable to win any of her three most recent here in allowance company at odds of 9-5, 2-1, and 1-2, respectively, with field sizes of six, seven, and four, respectively, it is more than slightly difficult to build any sort of case for Simple Girl\u2019s chances of victory on Sunday. She is a hard knocker that has run several of her very best races at this one-mile distance and is the entrant most acclimated to this climate and surface, but lacking many other tangible attributes in the context of this field, it would seem that becoming graded stakes placed in this spot would be cause for massive celebration.<\/P>

It seems the goal of attaining graded stakes placed status extends beyond Simple Girl, as five-year-old Land Act<\/STRONG> has a fair amount in common with her rival here. She too has done most of her damage in conditioned allowance races, accounting for four of her seven wins, and she too can claim only minor stakes wins as her greatest accomplishment in terms of wins.<\/P>

<\/P>

That said, she has only recently progressed to graded stakes company, making her seasonal debut in the Group III Kyoto Highway. She was fairly well manhandled in that spot, finishing eleventh, more than seven behind Sunday\u2019s rival Lastpostonthebugle, who as mentioned, fell just short of withstanding the powerful late rally of the great Miss Timoshenko.<\/P>

However, she wasn\u2019t scared off from the graded stakes scene as six weeks later she shipped to Ireland to test the waters again in the Group III Park Place Express. Though the field was arguable slightly easier than that which she contested in her previous start, Land Act ran a deceptively impressive race, finishing fourth, well clear of the fifth place finisher, and about fifteen lengths in front of the very same Lastpostonthebugle that had outfinished her in the Kyoto.<\/P>

At 5-1 on the morning line, Land Act is an unfathomably shorter price than both Champion Final Exit and the great Quality Buzz. So, from a betting perspective, there is literally no way to even consider playing Land Act. But truly, of those that seemingly do not jump off the form and into your lap, she is perhaps the most intriguing. Carefully and patiently managed throughout her career to the point that a case can be made that the connections have managed to actually procure her peak form at age five, she appears to be less qualified than many of her rivals, but at the same time, the most likely to run her best race and be in a position to capitalize on any failures of those fillies and mares that aren\u2019t as diligently managed.<\/P>

It took ten tries and about three-quarters of a year for Dialuptheblitz<\/STRONG> to break her maiden and when she did, after a half-dozen tries against winners, it appeared she\u2019d probably die with one career win.<\/P>

Those first six starts after breaking her maiden, she couldn\u2019t even manage to break up a superfecta ticket, with average margin of defeat of nearly twenty lengths despite racing strictly in entry level allowance conditions against predominantly short fields. Then, in start number seventeen, she nailed that second career win. Of course, it took a pretty severely restricted condition, but she didn\u2019t exactly tower over the field, sent off at 12-1.<\/P>

Punctuating the fact that it wasn\u2019t a win registered strictly by default, she ran a career best speed rating, besting her maiden win and some thirty points better than what she had earned just two months earlier in her previous race. For those that detected a \u201cfluky\u201d effort, she underscored the top performance with a strong effort versus non-three lifetime rivals a few weeks later and then dominated a field five weeks later at an equivalent level – again running a career best speed rating, her first foray into triple digits.<\/P>

In five starts since, she has proven that it wasn\u2019t a temporary peak, winning twice more and hitting the board in four, the only deviation in her lone stakes appearance in which she finished fifth at 12-1.<\/P>

Now, granted, she is better now than she has ever been and she offers proof that some racehorses are worth keeping around for three years. But still, with only a maiden win and four allowance wins, simply being in career best form isn\u2019t enough credential to warrant a second look in this spot. She is two for three with a second on firm turf at this distance, but she has only the single stakes try on her form, and considering the best she could do was split the field while at the top of her game, expecting much from her against the collection she encounters on Sunday seems fairly delusional.<\/P>

At a minimum, at least Dialuptheblitz can\u2019t be accused of being the most ambitious entrant in the field. Four-year-old Cat Warrior<\/STRONG>, a daughter of EZ Warrior out of the maiden winning Pulpit mare My Deb Cat is wishing and praying that she can parlay a career best effort in a non-winners of three other than allowance against three rivals into one of the wildest upsets in sim racing history.<\/P>

Not that she hasn\u2019t upset a field before – right here about twenty-two months ago, she rallied from far back to win her career debut on the main track at 17-1, beating a field that produced eight other winners, including runner-up O.C. Legend, a multiple stakes winner that has earned over a third of a million dollars to date.<\/P>

In her fourth start, she made the switch to the turf course, and her record is solid. With three wins and second from six tries, Cat Warrior has been effective in her brief career. With that said, the two starts that did not result in a top-two finish account for her two stakes appearances on turf, and to be polite, those two races were pretty dismal.<\/P>

In the Triangular Beer Turf Filly Sprint, she faced just five others and was the only entrant sent off at odds higher than 6-1, crossing the wire last at 49-1. A few starts later upon deciding that sprinting may not be her forte, she tried the Silver Cozzene Turf Mare Memorial at a mile and a sixteenth. In a field of seven, she was again sent off as the only runner at odds higher than 6-1, this time off at 33-1. She did manage to beat one home this time, but that mare, Mt Myniner had clearly already headed down the other side of her career peak. <\/P>

Cat Warrior, in contrast to that rival, is headed the other way. Since the Silver Cozzene, she has won two conditioned allowance races with a second between the wins. Her speed ratings have improved from race to race in each of her last four starts, culminating in her first triple digit number last time. Still, it appears as though on Sunday she will likely keep her record intact in stakes company, once again looking to finish at or near the bottom the chart as the longest price in the field.<\/P>

\u00a0<\/P><\/SPAN><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Post Time Sunday 2:00 OGT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}