Domestic Product (#5) scores the Tampa Bay Derby over No More Time. (Ben Baugh Photo for Past The Wire)
• Kinza Looking like a Female Nysos
• Older Female Division Still Lacking
Weekend Round-Up by Laura Pugh
There wasn’t a lot of Kentucky Derby prep race action this week, with the lone points race being the Tampa Bay Derby. Outside of that, it was a weekend that featured the females with two anticipated stakes for the older filly & mare division and a Kentucky Oaks points race. In addition to the racing drama, there was also quite a lot of racetrack drama when tote boards across the country just stopped working. As of yet, there has been no reason given as to why.
With all that in mind, it’s time to flesh out and decipher the results and happenings of this weekend.
Draw a Line Through the Tampa Bay Derby
I do NOT envy figure makers in this race. The pace was much slower than anything else on the Saturday card. Whether that was because of the extra waiting around, the track drying out from the rain earlier in the day or shifting from wind that was blowing anywhere from 17-21 mph from 3 p.m.-5:30 p.m., nobody knows.
The slow early pace resulted in a mad scramble for the finish line, where Domestic Product, who ran like a wrecking ball through the stretch, won it by a neck. I was actually surprised, looking at the head-on, that there wasn’t an inquiry, or an objection lodged by the rider of the nine, Grand Mo the First. Domestic Product veered out on a few occasions, bumping him hard in the stretch drive, and only wound up beating him a long neck. After a brief bump from No More Time, Domestic Product veered back in, leaning heavily on No More Time in the late stages of the final 1/16th.
Personally, I’m drawing a line through this race. I think No More Time and Good Money were probably the best two but given the events leading up to the race and all that occurred during it, I think a wait and see with the top four of the race is the best approach moving forward.
Kinza Looking like a Female Nysos
We all know that Bob Baffert is locked and loaded with talented 3-year-old colts, which isn’t an abnormality, but super talent 3-year-old fillies are. However, here he is in 2024 with a New York (insert irony here) daughter of Carpe Diem named Kinza.
Kinza, like Nysos, is unbeaten and unchallenged in her three-start career. She wins her races by blitzing her foes with scorching early splits, which have thus far, taken all the starch out of them. Her final splits aren’t anything to write home about, but I said the same for another talented filly called Songbird a few years back, and it just turned out that she had way more in the tank than I gave her credit for.
She isn’t eligible for the Kentucky Oaks, which is quite the shame, but that does pose an interesting question of “where does she go from here?” In 2022, Baffert had Faiza who went next to the Santa Anita Oaks, before finishing third in the Black-Eyed Susan on the Preakness undercard. However, given this filly’s speed, I think it is entirely possible that we see her in the Acorn Stakes, three weeks later, at Belmont Park.
Older Female Division Still Lacking
Were you waiting to see something special from the Beholder Mile and Azeri? There were some promising looking new shooters in there after all, right? Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure we are still waiting, seeing as nothing inspiring came from those two races. No Beholder’s, no Life at Ten’s, nada.
To be fair, Sharp Azteca didn’t look bad, but going all out to beat Adare Manor, who was seventh of nine in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, over her HOME course, isn’t something I’d be jumping up and down about. Especially considering that Adare Manor does her best running when leading or sitting just off the leaders. In the Beholder Mile, she was stuck on the rail and due to that, gave Sharp Azteca two lengths turning for home, which she whittled down to ¾’s of a length.
Call me crazy, but that just doesn’t scream super star.
Where is Idiomatic when you need some spice?
