Mike Watchmaker

The total win pool in last weekend’s Kentucky Oaks Future Wager was small, only $63,804, so drawing broad, concrete conclusions from the closing odds in this bet would be a mistake. Nevertheless, it is interesting seeing what even a small slice of the betting public thought about nearly all of the leading 3-year-old fillies in the country.

Uncle Mo’s successful 3-year-old debut Saturday in Gulfstream Park’s Timely Writer Stakes was not, unlike each of his three performances last year, the sort of effort that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Uncle Mo’s four opponents Saturday were seriously overmatched – although I do think runner up Rattlesnake Bridge has a chance to be a nice horse – and the preliminary 89 Beyer Figure Uncle Mo earned was pedestrian by his lofty standards.

Stay Thirsty ran well winning Saturday’s Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct. The Gotham was far from the strongest Kentucky Derby prep run so far this year, and with a preliminary Beyer Figure of 89, it was also far from the fastest. But Stay Thirsty deserves credit for winning as decisively as he did around two turns in his first start in four months off of only five published workouts.

Even if Twirling Candy wins Saturday’s Santa Anita Handicap as expected, and does so in decisive fashion as most anticipate, he still has work to do to equal or surpass certain career achievements of most of the winners of the last 10 runnings of the Big Cap. In some cases, he has lots of work to do.

On Jan. 23, I posted some thoughts in this space on how I was skeptical of Soldat's big double-digit allowance win in relatively fast final time two days earlier at Gulfstream Park because that score came over the sort of sloppy track that often artificially skews good or poor performances.