Extravagant Kid scores first for American-based runners in Al Quoz Sprint

Extravagant Kid always has been a clever horse, according to his trainer Brendan Walsh, and at age 8, he had gotten a little too smart for his own good. Extravagant Kid, Walsh thought, had gotten into habits of thinking, watching, and not fully extending in his races.

A trip to Dubai for a start in the Al Quoz Sprint, Walsh theorized, might tamp down those behaviors. Extravagant Kid had spent his whole career, all 49 starts of it, racing around turns in North America. The Al Quoz, run at six furlongs, 1,200 meters, down straight course would come as such a surprise to the gelding that he’d just run, not think. And it worked.

Under Ryan Moore, Extravagant Kid burst to the lead in the final 100 meters and captured the Group 1, $1 million Al Quoz by a half-length.

Extravagant Kid, remarkably, became the first American-based horse to win a turf race on the Dubai World Cup card.

For Walsh, a native of Ireland who once worked in Dubai for Godolphin, Extravagant Kid made him 2 for 2 in World Cup races, his only other starter, Plus Que Parfait, winner of the 2019 UAE Derby.

Final Song finished second and huge longshot Acklam Express, a neck farther back, was third in what Moore termed “a very messy race.” Odds-on favorite Space Blues, bothered slightly at the start, raced alongside Extravagant Kid halfway through the race but had no turn of foot and finished ninth.

Extravagant Kid had plenty of punch, just as Walsh hoped with the switch to a straight course. The Al Quoz race shape was strange, with nine horses in a pack along the inside rail and four on the outside after 200 meters. Six members of the inside pack, including Extravagant Kid, then peeled off from the inside group to get up onto what generally is the best part of the Meydan course in these straight-course turf sprints, leaving just three down along the inner portion.

With 400 meters to run, Extravagant Kid was nearer the back of that nine-horse bunch than the front, but Moore got to work. Acklam Express, racing among the group of three, took a lead, but Extravagant Kid collared him with 100 meters to run and held clear a late challenge from Final Song.

Extravagant Kid, who paid $34.50 in the global parimutuel pool, was timed in 1:09.26 while winning for the 15th time in 50 starts. Bred in Florida, the gelding is by Kiss the Kid out of Pretty Extravagant, by With Distinction, and he began his career the better part of six years ago. David Ross, who races as DARRS Inc., claimed Extravagant Kid for $75,000 in January 2018 and turned him over to Walsh, the beginning of a long, fruitful partnership. The Al Quoz was Extravagant Kid’s 25th stakes start since that claim – and surely the most satisfying for his connections.