Gun Runner Wins, Passes the Torch

The big check yesterday at Gulfstream was made out to Winchell Thoroughbreds LLC and Three Chimneys Farm. Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}) was Gun Runner in the GI Pegasus World Cup. Just as he has done in every race since he was defeated by 'TDN Rising Star' Arrogate (Unbridled's Song) in the 2017 GI Dubai World Cup, he thrashed his competition. In this case, very good competition. This is one good race horse.

But Gun Runner will not race again, as he is off to begin what figures to be a long and lucrative career as stallion. So, who will be the horse to take his place? The Pegasus answered that question. West Coast (Flatter) wasn't as good as Gun Runner, but he was much better than the 10 others in the race. He just turned four, he's trained by Bob Baffert and he has a world of talent. Barring an injury, he is obviously the leading contender to be this year's Gun Runner. That means a dominant campaign and a Horse of the Year title.

Then again, he has a tough act to follow. In a relatively short period of time, the sport has produced three horses who are deserving of being called great. As in truly great, without an ounce of hyperbole. The list starts with Triple Crown winner American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile), includes Arrogate and ends with Gun Runner. This is a horse who won five consecutive Grade I races, including the GI Breeders' Cup Classic and the Pegasus and was never seriously threatened on any of those occasions.

For Gun Runner, the Pegasus was supposed to present more of a challenge than it did. That had something to do with the competition and a lot to do with the post position draw. The 10 post is an immensely difficult place to start from when trying to win a 1 1/8-mile dirt race at Gulfstream. The run to the first turn is nothing and horses drawing the outside tend to lose a significant amount of ground on that bend. The race needs to be changed to either a mile-and-three-sixteenths or a mile-and-a-quarter, but that's a story for another day. But thanks to jockey Florent Geroux and some odd decisions from his competitors, the post was no factor at all.

Geroux rode a beautiful race. With Mike Smith, who was aboard Collected (City Zip), the only other jockey who rode aggressively in the opening quarter-mile, the race fell into Geroux's lap. He didn't have to worry about four or five other horses going into that turn and hanging him wide, so he rode Gun Runner just hard enough to secure his spot in second, just outside of Collected and in the two path. That he was able to save as much ground as he did early on was remarkable.

He might want to send a note of thanks to Irad Ortiz, Jr. I don't know if he was riding to instructions or not, but what he did aboard Sharp Azteca (Freud) was baffling and changed the entire complexion of the race. Sharp Azteca is a miler and a fast one at that and he drew a great post in the four. Surely, he would go for the lead? Nope. Ortiz put a stranglehold on his talented mount and had him fifth early and, on top of that, wide. Perhaps the connections thought that was the only way the horse was going to last going 1 1/8 miles, but it was a poor decision that backfired and Geroux probably wouldn't have gotten his dream trip if Sharp Aztecta was ridden differently.

If the economics of the sport were different than they are, we'd be seeing a lot more of Gun Runner, and wouldn't that be fun? This is a horse who, at age five, has only now reached his peak and is certainly the best horse on the planet. He could storm his way through another campaign, in Dubai, at Saratoga, at this year's Breeders' Cup Classic. But that's not how things work.

And Gary and Mary West, the owners of West Coast, and trainer Bob Baffert ought to be very happy that that is the case. With Gun Runner out of the way, who's going to beat this horse this year? His stablemate, Collected, didn't fire Saturday, as he backed up after engaging Gun Runner early. Sharp Azteca is going to go back to where he belongs, shorter races. The third-place finisher in the Pegasus was Gunnevera (Dialed In), but he finished far behind West Coast and just isn't as talented as Baffert's horse. Unless there is a 3-year-old out there who is ultra talented and able to take on West Coast in the Breeders' Cup Classic, it's easy to see West Coast running the table the rest of the way in 2018 and then going out with a win in the 2019 Pegasus.

The Pegasus may still be a work in progress and in need of some tweaking. But for the second straight year it featured an exceptional performance from exceptional horses and, in 2018, it gave the sport an additional chance to enjoy a superstar who otherwise would have been done after the Breeders' Cup. Yesterday was about the Pegasus and Gun Runner. Tomorrow is about West Coast. Thanks to Frank Stronach's $16-million race, the picture could not be more clear.