HALLANDALE BEACH, FL – Wednesday morning at Gulfstream Park, trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. was still trying to wrap his head around Chance It’s subpar performance in Saturday’s Tampa Bay Derby (G2).
Shooting Star Thoroughbreds LLC’s Chance It, a multiple-stakes winner who had never been worse that second in six prior career starts, finished sixth at Tampa Bay Downs, 9 ½ lengths behind the 49-1 upset winner King Guillermo.
“It’s so easy to make different excuses. We haven’t come up with an idea yet. We’ll just go over him for the rest of the week and maybe around Sunday come up with a reason why he didn’t run better,” said Joseph, who said the son of Currency Swap has shown no physical evidence that would explain his subpar showing. “It could be many things. We don’t know at the moment.”
Chance It rated off the pace between horses and advanced mildly on the turn into the stretch before flattening out in the stretch.
“They were going slow that day, I don’t know why he was that far back. They ran 48 [seconds for the first half-mile] – I don’t think he’s run that slow in his life. It’s hard to say,” Joseph said.
Chance It was coming off an impressive victory in the Jan. 4 Mucho Macho Man at Gulfstream.
“We just have to let everything play out for a week and come up with a game plan,” Joseph said. “By the end of the week, we’ll go over him to see if anything starts to show up. If nothing shows up, then we’ll make plans – if we give him another [Triple Crown prep] race or just keep going one turn.”
Via GULFSTREAM PARK Press Release
