The $20 million Saudi Cup (G1) is Saturday, Feb. 14, at King Abdulaziz Racecourse in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and US Racing is publishing profiles of all the contenders.
He’s won 17 Triple Crown races, 21 Breeders’ Cup events, and just about every other major stakes you can think of. Yet even Bob Baffert can’t win them all.
Not yet anyway. The $20 million Saudi Cup (G1) will have only its seventh running Saturday at King Abdulaziz Racecourse. Baffert has been close five times in the world’s richest race without finishing first. He’s been second twice, third twice, and fourth once.
“That 100-meter mark is a killer for me,” Baffert said. “We’re always ahead at the 100-meter mark, and we’ve come agonizingly close. That’s the one race we haven’t won, so it would be nice to win it.”
His best chance so far may be Nysos, who’s 7-for-8 lifetime, including 7-for-7 on fast tracks. His only defeat was a dead-heat second in a four-horse photo in the muddy Churchill Downs Stakes (G1). Like Nysos, the other three – winner Mindframe, Banishing, and Book’em Danno – have won multiple graded stakes.
So Nysos has the class to compete with the defending Saudi Cup champion, Forever Young. If the heavy favorite doesn’t win, Nysos could.
“We thought about this race a while back for Nysos,” Baffert said. It will be his first time beyond 1 1/16 miles, but 1 1/8 miles around one turn should be no problem for a son of Kentucky Derby (G1) hero Nyquist out of a mare by Preakness winner Bernardini.
“After he won the Breeders’ Cup Mile (G1), we decided to run him an extra year as he didn’t get to run all that much. The Saudi Cup has always been on the radar for him since then.”
If, for some reason, Forever Young isn’t his usual dominant self, Nysos could win at a generous price. Play him to win and place, and box him in exactas with the defending champion.
Notes: Before leaving for the Middle East, Nysos worked 5 furlongs handily in 59.40 seconds Jan. 31 at Santa Anita. That workout came a week after a stamina-building 7-furlong drill in 1:25 … Baffert was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009 … He has trained 23 individual Eclipse Award winners and been voted the year’s Outstanding Trainer four times.
Ed McNamara is an award-winning racing writer who has covered the sport since 1981 for The Bergen (N.J.) Record, Newsday, ESPN, Thorocap, and USRacing. He is the author of Cajun Racing: From the Bush Tracks to the Triple Crown and Racing Around the World, and a contributor to The Most Glorious Crown and The Racetracks of America. He has also written for racing publications in France and Italy.
