SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY – Although an impressive win at GI Haskell S. helped Cyberknife (Gunman) second pick on the morning line for Saturday’s GI Runhappy Travers S., trainer Brad Cox agrees with the question: Is your mare underrated?
“I think he’s a bit underwhelming, given the fact that he’s won two Is,” Cox said.
Very quickly, Cox made it clear that he wasn’t making excuses that the person in line for the 153rd Trader figured it out. The epicenter (Not this time) will have the lowest odds on his name when the portal opens. It is estimated that GII winner Jim Dandy S. leaving in sixth place would have resulted in a 7-5 in field eight.
“Obviously, the favorite horse is a very good one,” Cox said. “He was second in the Kentucky Derby and I think that’s a long way off. Then the team won the Kentucky Derby 10-1″.
Cyberknife is listed at 7-2 after drawing the tracks in 1 1/4 mile Travers. Rich Strike (Keen Ice), the 80-1 winner of the Derby, will enter the back door. He finished sixth in the GI Belmont S. June 11 in his most recent start. Rich Strike will be the 27th Derby winner to qualify for Travers. Ten won.
“This year’s Kentucky Derby is a race, and I’m not taking anything away from the winner, but it’s just a race where if it’s run many more times you get different results. ,” said Cox. “It’s one of those Derby games that you see every 10 to 15 years when you don’t think anything could happen. That has a lot to do with speed and I have two horses involved in that speed. If we rewinded, we wouldn’t go so fast. No one will have. It’s just the way it happened and it happened. “
Cyberknife, owned by Saratoga resident Al Gold’s Gold Square LLC, finished in 18th place in the Derby after starting in 16th with 14-1 after trailing the pace. Another Cox Derby horse, Zozos (Munnings). Saturday.
“It’s not a true read with them coming so early,” Cox said. “I don’t think he’ll have any problems with mileage and 1/4, just based on pedigree and how he’s finished in his races.”
That pedigree has connections to Travers. Gunman third in Arrogate’s Travers leaderboard in 2016 and his damn man, Flower Alley (Funny Distortion) won the race in 2005.
Cyberknife locked down its Derby stop with a 2 3/4 win in the GI Arkansas Derby 5-1. The race at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday of May was a disappointment, but Cyberknife prepared Haskell with a 1-2 victory over GIII Matt Winn S. at Churchill on June 12. won the second I rank. – the only runner in the Travers field to have a pair – with a big show at Monmouth Park July 23. Months ago, Cox said that Cyberknife is a slow maturing pony and could be better in half end of the year. So far, that seems like an astute assessment.
“He broke the track record and the stake record in Haskell,” Cox said. “We look forward to giving him a chance at a mile and a half. We know a lot more about him now than we did when we ran him a mile and a quarter in the Kentucky Derby. Hopefully he won’t be part of some kind of suicidal speed. I don’t think there will be one anyway. We’ll see how it plays out. Overall, the horse is doing very well. He has settled here. He’s been here for five weeks, I think he’s set up for a huge effort. “
Cyberknife has worked three times on the main track in Saratoga, most recently five times lasting at 1pm on Saturday.
Starting with the inside post in Haskell at the hands of trainer Florent Geroux, Cyberknife went on a stalking trip, saving the ground. While Taiba (Gunman) is taking a step outside for favorite Jack Christopher (Munnings) near the turret, Cyberknife and Geroux are attacking from near the rails.
“I think the most impressive thing was probably when they got home, Florent seemed to have settled in,” Cox said. “It just shows how much talent he really has. He actually flew there to lead inside Jack Christopher and was able to dig deep and really fight to get there and gallop in a nice way. That is the most impressive.
“The other thing that was very impressive to him, which he did in the Arkansas Derby, he was able to sit inside the horses, and he wasn’t too tired and felt the pressure from the other horses. . He will relax on the inside, which I think is a great asset.”
Comfort on the tracks could prove to be a boon in Travers, which has had but two winners from No. 1 over the past 40 years: Holy Bull (Great Above) in 1994 and Arrogate (Unbridled Song) ) in 2016.
The last Haskell winner to double in Travers was Point Given (Thunder Gulch) in 2001. Since then, 12 Haskell winners have appeared in Travers, most notably the Triple Crown winner. American pharoah (Pioneer of the Nile), who is second to Keen Ice (Curlin) in 2015.
Cox won last year’s Travers with Necessary quality (Tapit). While confident that Cyberknife is ready for this test, he said he was a bit surprised that the pony was placed as high as he was at the light line.
“Perhaps a little,” he said. “I think maybe Zandon (Start up) would be the second choice. It doesn’t really matter. I think the man with the odds here in New York does it as well as anyone, so he might find out. It doesn’t really matter as long as we are the first choice after the race.”
