The Holy Bull....Sat. 1/25/14

The Holy Bull  G2

GP - Sat. 1/25/14  R10

Finally, a race with some horses that have actually beaten or ran well against something beside maidens. This looks to be the best 3yr old race so far and it is a full field of competitive looking colts.

There are some very well bred colts in this, and since I like to handicap these races by pedigree, I will try to nail something at nice odds. If one just considers speed figures there are numerous possibilities so it should make for an interesting race. Most of the speed seems to be toward the rail so it looks like the closing horses may have a lot of ground to make up. Of course, it all depends on how fast they go up front whether or not they fade in the end.

Cairo Prince will probably be the favorite but he probably won't be real short odds. He has a nice pedigree that has a few much older horses close up in his breeding. I see no reason to say he can't get a classic distance.

Wicked Strong is another well bred colt who ran close up to Cairo Prince last time and may have been compromised by the extremely slow pace that he was closing into. A little more pace and he could be dangerous here.

Coup de Grace is a Tappit colt and as a rule I don't favor them at the classic distances but it may be because a lot of them happen to have a lot of RAN mares in the key spots in their pedigree which doesn't bode well for the classic distances. This one however has a nice Ribot cross which may increase his chances of getting the longer distances.

Mr Speaker is one of those Phipps horses that, like Orb, can be very good or kind of mediocre. They have a tendency to confuse me somewhat. Also, this one has been very good so far on the grass and I'll wait to see what he does on the dirt.

Almost Famous has a lovely pedigree with the paternal G. Dam being a really nice cross brought into the Northern Dancer line and the cross being bred back into the Northern Dancer, Nasrullah lines. I really like this pedigree and he may be one that has speed and can run all day.

As I've said, this is a group of well bred youngsters and most of them brought some very high prices at the sales so I would assume they were all quite handsome. Most of them have run well and show some real talent and there are some speed figures that are not all that far apart. I will lean to the pedigrees I like best.

1- Almost Famous
2- Coup de Grace
3- Wicked Strong
4-Cairo Prince
Long Shots- Our Caravan, Financial Mogul

Backstretch