Slim chance Shared Belief will run in Malibu

DEL MAR, Calif. – Shared Belief is back at Golden Gate Fields and won’t be leaving anytime soon. His trainer and co-owner, Jerry Hollendorfer, said Shared Belief is being freshened, and the only chance he would run before the end of the year is if Hollendorfer decides to go in the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita on that track’s opening day, Dec. 26. Otherwise, Shared Belief will await 2015.

“I’m not getting in a hurry with him. I’ll freshen him a little,” Hollendorfer said Friday. “I’m not going to send him out to a farm or anything like that, but we’re going to take our time with him. He’s had a good campaign.

“We’ll take some time and make a determination for next year. The seven-eighths race at Santa Anita,” he said, referring to the Malibu, “is a passing thought.”

Shared Belief, last year’s champion 2-year-old male, was unbeaten in seven starts, including four this year, before finishing fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 1 at Santa Anita. He was part of a severe bumping incident at the start initiated by the race winner, Bayern, and then shortly after that, Shared Belief had to check when Toast of New York came across sharply from an outside stall.

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Hollendorfer has declined to make a public statement about the incident or the decision of Santa Anita’s three stewards to let the result stand.

The timetable Hollendorfer laid out eliminates from consideration a race like the Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs later this month. If Shared Belief were to run in the Malibu, that potentially could sway voters just before the Eclipse Award deadline at the end of the year, but Hollendorfer is more interested in the long-term interests of Shared Belief, a gelding, so he would only run in the Malibu if it’s the right race, not because a championship would be at stake.

As for the first part of 2015, Hollendorfer said he would “have to think about” the Dubai World Cup because of its large purse, but he never has run a horse in Dubai and is not overly enthusiastic about the prospect of going there.