Arrogate never looked comfortable to me in the Pacific Classic. I don’t know if it’s his problem mentally or physically, or if perhaps he doesn’t care for this new Del Mar strip at all but he looked like he was laboring early in the race to me.
Even when he was sitting closer to the pace than he was in the San Diego he seemed Mike Smith was encouraging him and he was trying but not looking fluent. At various points he looked to me like he would be off the board but found the guts he needed to make a run at stablemate Collected in the stretch and even made it look like it could get interesting for a second.
I think he did it on class and he will have to improve to win a consecutive Breeders’ Cup Classic which will be run over this same Del Mar track. We know they can work on it and it can be quite different come Breeders’ Cup, but I don’t like how Arrogate gets over it. Collected is a nice horse in his own right, and a mile and a quarter may be pushing his limit but the Arrogate of a few months ago would have him for lunch.
It will be interesting to see how Bob trains Arrogate up to the Breeders’ Cup.
