Almost impossible to handicap this one until one can see the actual field. The Cali horses have controlled home field with wins in every year but Bobbie Kitten. Don\'t see a lot of blistering speed here. Pure Sensation turned in a top effort in last and is 6 for 9 career on Turf. But my God its gonna be hard to take 5-2 or 3-1 in this spot.
Since this course is not like any other course, not surprisingly, this race has been run five times at SA and four of the times it was won by a "SA Hill Specialist" who had previous success down the hill. Before they won, all three horses (Mizdirection won twice) had demonstrated a fondness for the hill. Desert Code was 5-3-0-0, California Flag was 4-2-0-0 and Mizdirection was "just" 5-5-0-0 when she won the second time. The other winner was Bobby's Kitten, a router with speed on the cutback. On this course, I am a firm believer that the inside posts on this course are awful when there are full fields. It has a much more diluted effect in smaller fields during the regular meet as they tend to load more towards the outside, but in a full field of 13 or 14 that they should have on Saturday, the inside is a death trap, especially post 1. In addition, it is tough for jockeys to come in who regularly do not ride the hill to get the proper pacing and "slingshot" effect across the dirt and into the stretch. One major issue in the past was that most of the turf sprint specialists not from California were speedballs that were best at 5 or 5.5F and did not have the stamina to get that extra furlong. The last time they ran this race at SA, a number of trainers have figured that out and there seemed to be a greater number of horses entered that are trying to cutback in distance rather than stretch it. Cutbacks are often fairly successful on this course. However, as noted, there seems to be a lack of speed here, so maybe the play is to look for some early runners. We need to wait another day to find who is in the field and some of the those on the outside looking in may have an effect on this if they go, but while not a big TG handicapping component, I think it would be prudent to look at the speed signed on for this event. The other thing you often hear is that European horses would potentially have an easier time adapting as the course has an initial right hand turn that is more indicative of European courses as is the change in elevation. That being said, Europeans have not fared well over the SA course as they have finished 4th, 8th, 10th, 12th and 14th (twice).