Loading ...Feb 01 2016
Mo Power to Todd Pletcher and JR Velasquez
Saturday, January 2016
Gulfstream Park
Todd Pletcher won a maiden special weight race for three year olds at Gulfstream Park race 9, with a horse called Mo Power. Who cares? Well, we do, for starters.
1. It’s Todd. 2. It’s Uncle Mo. 3 It’s Repole Stables and 4. It was on the same day as the Swale G2 and Holy Bull G2. The 4-5 favorite took control in the stretch and won the 8f race handily.
Was it as fast as the 7f Swale? No but it was within a second at the half. It was significantly faster than the Holy Bull, until the mile, when Mo Power was under a hand ride for a 1.36.8 final time.
Holy Bull winner Mohaymen started a bit slow but finished strong, coming in at 1.36 flat and 1.42 flat for the 8.5f two races later.
What’s the significance? It’s an oft pulled trick by trainers to enter their horse in an undercard event, rather than the main event, to see how they might measure up to the main competition, without actually running against them.
In this case, Mo Power performed admirably, picking up the pace when he needed to, then riding out to victory. He would have needed to go a bit faster in the end to win the Holy Bull, but he was assuredly faster at the half and the 3/4 pole than the competition in the graded stakes event.
So, Todd has sized up his 2nd time starter. Finishing a neck back in his first time out, he ran admirably on the undercard. It looks like that, if he were rated properly, he would have been in serious contention in the Holy Bull, had he run in the race.
Mo Power has to now be thrown in the mix as a possible Kentucky Derby contender, like it or not. The entire purpose of the MSW race was to test his ability for this, and he passed the test with flying colors.
