Impressive Three-Year-Olds Find the Gulfstream Winner's Circle

 

With 2014 Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks prep races continuing this weekend, we wanted to take a quick look back at last weekend’s impressive three-year-old winners at Gulfstream.  

The headline race was the $400,000 Grade 2 Holy Bull Stakes and it was won in absolutely dominant fashion by Cairo Prince.

Conceding between two to six pounds of weight to his 10 rivals, Cairo Prince enjoyed an outside tracking trip. He overwhelmed his pace targets on the far turn on his way to a lopsided victory by almost six lengths. 

 

Cairo Prince was assigned a strong 104 TimeformUS speed figure for his performance, and that speed figure represents the fastest figure in a two-turn race by any horse in this crop to date. Prior to the Holy Bull Stakes, Shared Belief (103 speed figure in the Hollywood Futurity) had owned that distinction. 

Always a very good looking horse, Cairo Prince sold for $250,000 as a yearling. That amount made him the most expensive of 57 different Pioneerof the Nile sired yearlings to sell at public auction in 2012.

In terms of pedigree, Cairo Prince gets his stamina from his aforementioned sire Pioneerof the Nile, who finished a distant second to Mine That Bird in the 2009 Kentucky Derby. The dam of Cairo Prince is Holy Bubbette, and she was an extremely quick Graded Stakes placed sprinter who never even attempted at a distance beyond seven furlongs.

Cairo Prince is a three-quarter sibling to the quick Nonna Mia (Empire Maker-Holy Bubbette) who set the pace before finishing third in a very exciting edition of the 2009 Frizette behind future stars Devil May Care and Awesome Maria.

Cairo Prince is trained by Kiaran McLaughlin, a man who seemingly had the Kentucky Derby won with 71/1 longshot Closing Argument in 2005, before a last gasp surge from Giacomo got him up in the final strides. Closing Argument finished second, beaten just a half length, while another half length clear of that years third-place Derby finisher Afleet Alex. 

All in all, Cairo Prince is a very promising prospect who has done nothing wrong in his career to this point.  After an impressive debut win, he was much the best in his Nashua victory second time out. His only defeat to date was by a nose when Honor Code nailed him late in a very slow paced Remsen, a race which strangely found him behind Honor Code in the early and middle stages.

There has been a lot of attention given to Holy Bull second place finisher Conquest Titan, but we believe it's largely without merit. Conquest Titan simply languished behind a very honest early pace, and grinded his way past all the horses left in the wake of Cairo Prince. 

The day’s other exceptional performance at Gulfstream came from the Shug McGaughey-trained Top Billing in an entry level allowance race hours before the Holy Bull.

That winning performance earned Top Billing a solid TimeformUS speed figure of 97. An unfortunate reality is that the public always seems to go overboard for deep closing horses who perform well at Gulfstream Park, due to the silly perception that Gulfstream is some speed biased paradise.

Generally, since Gulfstream Park's renovation prior to 2005, these highly touted deep closing three-year-olds usually prove to be busts more often than not. Obviously, horses like Orb and Ice Box are exceptions, because both ran huge in the Kentucky Derby. However, in both instances, they ran huge in the Kentucky Derby on a wet track, with an eye-popping fast pace, and both Orb and Ice Box never achieved much after the Kentucky Derby. Orb never finished better than third in four starts after the Derby. Ice Box never finished better than third in numerous starts after the Derby. 

While the horses with running styles like Dialed In and Orb really excite the public when they win at Gulfstream Park, a lot of very good three-year-olds have run speed-and-fade type races at Gulfstream. Indeed, Mucho Macho Man set the pace in the Holy Bull stakes, and he faded to finish in fourth place. 

Even if he's a little bit over-hyped right now, Top Billing is a very serious horse with an excellent route pedigree. He’s a son of Curlin, and his dam Parade Queen was an excellent deep-closing router for trainer Neil Howard in the late 1990's. Most interesting about his pedigree, Top Billing is a half sibling to Untouched Talent, the dam of the sensationally brilliant Bodemeister.