Deep Ocean heads back to Deauville tomorrow for another handicap, this time at a slightly shorter distance of 1,900 meters. He ran a nice third last time out at 2,400 meters, but I had the impression, shared by the jockey, that a little shorter would be better. Tomorrow, we shall see. He seems healthy and in fine form since his last race (if you remember, he had a fever and a cough before that, like many of our horses who struggled with a mystery virus).
If tomorrow goes OK, Deep will join the team heading for Cagnes on Sunday. Satwa Sunrise is likely to kick off the festivities down there with another run in a claimer on Monday, Jan. 16. I’d rather wait another week for her, but we don’t have a lot of choices for her, so I think we’ll have to take this one. Waiting would mean putting her in for a cheaper claiming price than we’d like; after her nice run last time, she just might get bought for anything less than 15,000. She will run for a tag of 20,000 on Monday, which should be high enough to keep buyers at bay. She needs a third run to qualify for handicaps, so I’m not bothered if she takes a check.
Our new arrival, Elbow Beach, also is on the slate for Cagnes, but she will probably need a week or two of fittening here in Maisons-Laffitte before she joins us down south. Horses need to hit the ground running, so to speak, in Cagnes, because the facilities really don’t lend themselves to speed work in the morning. You want to bring horses that just need to keep ticking over, and race every two weeks or so.
Magical Flower’s injury still leaves me one short on the Cagnes team; I’m hoping a solution will present itself before the week is out!
I hear Mark has been running sprints. Is he available?