Exaggerator

[Tale Of Ekati]

Uncle Lino first horse to run out of the Santa Anita Derby.
He ran pretty well.

[FrankD.]

Against what at LA?

Sherlock was high on Lino, talked him up pretty good all winter. He had his chances with the big boys and came up empty 3 times. Forgive the first one he wasn\'t cranked up. A complete toss is he goes to Baltimore.

[Tale Of Ekati]

Wasn\'t my point Frank.
My point is the race (Santa Anita Derby) may be productive, if you or anyone else believes in such.

[FrankD.]

Tale,

The way you worded it sounds  like you\'re talking up Lino. The race was very productive as the 2nd and probably 4th choices in the Derby came out of it 1, 2.
Lino just not in that league IMHO and number wise.

[Tale Of Ekati]

Please excuse the confusion but I was referring to the Santa Anita Derby as a whole.
In my eyes, a race is productive (or non) when horses make their following starts. Uncle Lino is the first horse to run out of the Santa Anita Derby and clearly went forward off the race.

[FrankD.]

Tale,

No worries, did not mean to offend you. Lino\'s sheet is still up in the red board room going into that race. He would have been competitive in Louisiana.

[Tale Of Ekati]

No offense taken Frank. None at all.
Some of us believe in key races, some don\'t. To me, it\'s another ingredient in the sauce.
Exaggerator has such beautiful development. I actually told a friend of mine his sheet looks like Charlize Theron
Wet track or not, I just can\'t see him not hitting the board on Saturday.

[antonico1]

The only concern was that slow final work. Good horses work somewhat quick, especially improving 3 year olds. That last one was almost too slow, 1:02 3/5. Don\'t know if he has a history of working slow and then running well. But that last one is an eye opener for the wrong reasons.

[miff]

Roughly worked the same pre SA Derby big win

[rhagood]

Desormeaux likes to work them slower than most, with stronger finishes.  Fewer horses to work with (doesn\'t grind on them)  and emphasis on developing younger distance runners.  Track record is pretty good, here is a nice read from Bloodhorse, interesting that both he and Baffert respect Nyqvist while others don\'t.

A Derby Rookie\'s First Churchill Morning
by Claire Novak
4/30/2016 5:11:00 PM


There was a media throng swelling, rain pelting the roof of Barn 25, and an on-the-muscle horse to cool out April 30—Exaggerator, who had just powered through his final pre-race workout for the May 7 Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) and was now levitating with feel-good bounds on the end of a shank down the narrow shed row at Churchill Downs.

One could not miss the edge in trainer Keith Desormeaux\'s voice, as he emphatically exercised some reality-infused crowd control, powering out of the barn and backing the press away from its walls with a strategic adjustments to some stable barricades.

\"We\'re trying to cool this horse out and get his heart rate down. Horses don\'t like umbrellas!\" the Derby rookie exclaimed, his own pulse clearly on the rise.

Those who have been around this Run for the Roses circus a time or two know horsemen—born worriers to begin with—have plenty of concerns to address as their runners approach the race of a lifetime. On the morning of Exaggerator\'s final work, for instance, the Santa Anita Derby (gr. I) winner was met with an eyeful of brightly-clad marathon runners streaming through the infield, as news helicopters hovered overhead. And let\'s not forget the work was pushed back a day to begin with after California-based Desormeaux missed his flight to Louisville.

Much to his trainer\'s relief, Exaggerator stayed focused through the breeze—five furlongs in 1:02 3/5 under Hall of Fame brother Kent Desormeaux—and potential disaster was also averted back at the barn. With those hurdles out of the way, it was a much more relaxed and pleasant horseman who greeted the bedraggled press out in the rain after one final delay.

\"Excuse me,\" he said after polishing off a mid-morning snack. \"I\'ve got some cantaloupe in my teeth.\"

Keith Desormeaux, for all the times his brother Kent has ridden in the Run for the Roses (19) and won (three), is living his own first Kentucky Derby experience. He could have made it with I\'ve Struck a Nerve, but the colt who upset the 2013 Risen Star Stakes (gr. II) at odds of 135-1 sustained an ankle injury during a workout in March and never ran again. Texas Red, the Breeders\' Cup Juvenile (gr. I) winner of 2014, was also sidelined with a foot abscess that led to a quarter crack.

So what\'s it like to finally be here, to actually have a chance at saddling a Derby runner with the race just seven days away?

\"The words pop out pretty good when I\'m describing my horse and describing the race and why we\'re here, but when you ask me a question like that, the words don\'t come as easily,\" Desormeaux said. \"I don\'t know if I\'m still taking it in. It\'s still sinking in that we\'re here. It is one of those subconscious goals that all trainers hope to achieve, but now that I\'m here, it\'s just a culmination of what we\'ve put in over the years. No real surreal or euphoric feeling yet. It\'s just still work.\"

It was a fitting sort of morning for Desormeaux\'s first meeting with the Kentucky Derby media, under gray skies and steady rain. Exaggerator\'s Santa Anita Derby victory, one of the most visually impressive of the Triple Crown trail with a 6 1/4-length win margin, came over a sloppy, sealed track after a rare Southern California storm.

\"I want a dry track because his odds will be better,\" Desormeaux said. \"If the track\'s off, they\'re going to bet more on him, and I think he\'s just as good on a dry track.\"

The secret to Exaggerator\'s impressive Santa Anita Derby win, the trainer said, came not in the track condition but in the setup of the early pace. After Danzing Candy sped to the early lead and went the half in :45.24, Exaggerator closed from seventh to pick up the pieces for his large ownership, a group that includes Big Chief Racing, Head of Plains Partners, and Rocker O Ranch. WinStar Farm is also now on the bandwagon with an arranged stud deal when Exaggerator\'s racing career is done.

BLOOD-HORSE STAFF: Exaggerator to WinStar After Racing

\"I\'d love to say that my horse is awesome and he just blew them off the map because he\'s just physically in another orbit compared to them, but it was mainly due to the half-mile in :45,\" Desormeaux said. \"American Pharoah, Secretariat reincarnate, cannot go :45 and continue. If Secretariat was in the race and went :45, Exaggerator would have beat him. So it\'s all about pace. That\'s the main reason why he looked so spectacular.

\"He was the only one in that race that was comfortable in the first half. They went too fast (and) he blew by them. He was running, the eighths he was clipping off were solid, but they weren\'t spectacular. He was just the only one finishing.\"

In the Kentucky Derby, Exaggerator will meet champion Nyquist again. He did not have to face the seven-for-seven colt at Santa Anita, because Nyquist traveled to Florida instead and soundly trounced previously undefeated Mohaymen in the April 2 Xpressbet.com Florida Derby (gr. I).

\"Nyquist is a faster horse, he\'s proved that—what else does he have to do?\" Desormeaux said. \"The only thing I can hope is that, as you all know, these young horses are maturing daily. They\'re still not physically at their peak. Some horses mature faster than others. It goes back to pedigree. My horse is built different than Nyqyuist and probably has a lot more growing to do, where Nyquist is probably leveled out. I don\'t know, I hate to expound on another man\'s horse, but all I can hope is that my horse is maturing and becoming faster, where Nyquist hopefully is leveling off. That\'s all I can hope for.\"

So what positives does Desormeaux find in his colt, a bay runner purchased for $110,000 from the Warrendale Sales consignment to the 2014 Keeneland September yearling sale?

\"He obviously fits well,\" the trainer said. \"I guess No. 1 is pedigree. He\'s by Curlin   out of a Vindication mare. That means he can run all day. This mile and a quarter race is a whole new ballgame, and endurance is the key.

\"Second of all, the style of running. It seems practical to me that it\'s more effective to be an off-the-pace horse in order to get a mile and a quarter, than trying to run a mile and a quarter on the lead. I don\'t know, that\'s what I think. So his style fits that as well. He should be able to get a mile and a quarter with no trouble, and of course class comes into play—and he\'s shown his class.\"

For Desormeaux, 48, who has built a career training horses for endurance and longevity rather than sheer speed, the opportunity to finally saddle a Derby starter admittedly comes with incomparable pressure. But it is the pressure that goes along with the satisfaction of competing at the highest possible level of the game, and that\'s the kind of pressure Desormeaux is willing to take.

\"I\'m just glad to get here for my owners and for my own career,\" he said. \"Just the style and the type of training that I do, that I think is a little offbeat, it\'s a little different from the norm. I want my horses to be steady for a while. To show that style can get us to the top level is pretty gratifying.\"



Copyright © 2016 The Blood-Horse, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[toppled]

He ran a 102 4/5 (67/71) 1 week before the SA Derby.  Of his last 12 workouts, the only time they put the hammer down was 13 days before his 3yo debut when he ran a bullet 58 1/5.
I\'d be more concerned that his best races as a 2yo and his best race as a 3yo were on wet tracks.  Brody\'s Cause already has finished ahead of him twice including beating him on a wet track & getting a better TG # than him in the muddy Breeder\'s Futurity last October.

[rhagood]

Yes, more on that work:

Exaggerator Works for Kentucky Derby Bid
by Claire Novak
4/30/2016 10:16:00 AM


Santa Anita Derby (gr. I) winner Exaggerator put in his final pre-race breeze ahead of the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) the morning of April 30 at Churchill Downs, going five furlongs in 1:02 3/5 under jockey Kent Desormeaux.

Trainer Keith Desormeaux, the Hall of Fame rider\'s brother, said the Curlin   colt has not lost form since coming out of his impressive Santa Anita Derby win.

BALAN: Exaggerator Soars Home in Santa Anita Derby

\"The work was nice,\" Desormeaux said. \"That\'s the first time in a while I\'ve watched a work from the backside ... what I saw from the backside was a nice, smooth breakoff from the pony ... I\'ve heard already that he was clipping off nice eighths in :12, final time was 1:02-and-three, I got him galloping out in 1:28; all that\'s very nice. But the nicest thing is, that time is one fifth from the time he went before the Santa Anita Derby, so he seems to be on the same level. A lot of this is mental, so he\'s clipping off the work mentally correct.\"

Churchill Downs clockers caught Exaggerator in splits of :12 4/5, :25 1/5, :37 4/5, and :50 2/5, out in 1:15 3/5 and 1:29 3/5.

\"It\'s typical, especially with a big race like that, you\'re going to see a horse regress,\" Desormeaux said. \"In other words, they need to rest and recover in that time. He did that pretty quickly, he recovered pretty quickly in the first week, and since then he\'s progressed to this point. We\'re just glad not to see a continual regression after that first week. He\'s progressing; that\'s positive.\"

 

Copyright © 2016 The Blood-Horse, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[toppled]

\"I want a dry track because his odds will be better,\" Desormeaux said. \"If the track\'s off, they\'re going to bet more on him, and I think he\'s just as good on a dry track.\"

2yo top dry track 4.5 points slower than 2yo top (which was only 1/4 point faster than his other 2yo mud race). His only fast races as a 2yo were on wet tracks.

3yo top dry track 1.75 points slower than 3yo top on sloppy SA Derby track.

Until he starts running comparable figures on dry tracks to his wet track races, the numbers say he\'s better on a wet track.

[antonico1]

Glad to read all of the past works on him are the same type. I remember Whittingham used to say that good horses almost always work faster than you\'d like them too but it doesn\'t necessarily hit them because they\'re good to begin with. Sunday Silence blazed 4 furlongs in 46 and change before the Derby and everyone thought his race was left on the track that morning. Charlie said \"Good horses can do that\" with more ease than not-so-good ones. Exaggerator looked like the goods last summer at Saratoga. I\'m hoping he\'s ready now.

[jerry]

You won\'t get 6-1 for all the reasons you\'ve mentioned. 4-1 would be fair.