Friday Odds, And How The Field Will Try To Take Down Taiba And Country Grammer

That Taiba is on the prongs of a contest that will demand the run of his life is not an obvious factor of his race in the 2023 Saudi Cup; he doesn’t know the world-beating dollar amount at stake on his performance, or know whom he’s supposed to trounce out there. He probably remembers that he has been in a plane for quite some hours and gone somewhere where there is a new track. But the awareness and the pressure of the ‘bigness’ the Saudi Cup brings is, however, a feature of the next two days left squarely to the horse’s principal connections, owner Amr Zedan, trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Mike Smith. Zedan and Baffert will digest the larger picture; Smith particularly will feel the burn in the less-than-two-minutes that the race will take. No matter the size of the pot, it’s the way horse racing works.

At 1800 meters (or 1.118 miles), the $20-million Saudi Cup is just shy of nine furlongs (or 1.125 miles), but that does not mean that it is a blazing, all-out quarter-horse sprint. It’s still over a mile long, a ‘middle distance’ race, and with thirteen contenders raging into and out of their lanes around the track — not to mention the all-or-nothing break in a race this short — there will be traffic of Kentucky Derby dimensions. From the gates to the wire, that will demand the heaviest sort of tactical maneuering by all comers, very much including our celebrated boy of the moment, Taiba.

But before we get into who’s trying to take Taiba and Mike “Big Money” Smith down, here’s a refresher on the London odds:

(Post Position, Horse, Friday’s London Odds)

1 Café Pharoah (USA), 14-1

2 Country Grammer (USA), 7-2

3 Crown Pride (JPN), 12-1

4 Emblem Road (USA), 14-1

5 Geoglyph (JPN), 16-1

6 Jun Light Bolt (JPN), 8-1

7 Panthalassa (JPN), 14-1

8 Remorse (IRE), 33-1

9 Scotland Yard (USA), 14-1

10 Taiba (USA), 7-4

11 Vin de Garde (JPN), 33-1

12 Lagertha Rhyme (IRE), 40-1

13 Sunset Flash (IRE), 50-1

(Post Positions Source: the Saudi Cup; Odds: William Hill, 2/23/2023)

Pictured above is last year’s elated winning jockey, the beloved Wigberto Ramos, in the moment of victory aboard Emblem Road who, despite that stellar win, is currently being thought in London as not having the best of chances against Taiba and/or Country Grammer. But in the largest sense, the pair represent the host of locally and or internationally owned competitors who are gunning for Taiba, and of whom it has to be said that they have a fair shot.

Early speed is the danger for every horse out there tomorrow, and to break that down a bit we’ll note that a ‘fast’ furlong is run approximately between 12 and 13 seconds — in races shorter than a mile. In races of a mile and longer, to which group the Saudi Cup just barely belongs, 14 seconds per furlong is fast. After the Saudi Cup’s first hard-fought eight furlongs the question will be who’s got the moxie or the gas left in the tank for that last grueling furlong to the wire.

For the jockeys in this equation taking a high-stepping Thoroughbred through his paces in a Saudi Cup — or for instance in the Kentucky Derby — is an exercise in precision. Two-time Kentucky Derby winner Mike Smith is famously adept at gauging whether the horses ahead and around him have much left in the tank and can in a millisecond make a decision that means the difference between landing in the winner’s circle, or not. On Saturday, any one of those battle-tested decisions can mean the difference between a $10 million boon for Taiba’s owner or a far lesser return.

In addition to the talented favorite, this is what the jockeys in the Cup are up against in Smith, which is now and will be a factor in the odds tomorrow. While it’s not thought that the horses outside of Taiba pose much of a threat — meaning the Japanese horse Vin de Garde, or the two Irish horses, Lagertha Rhyme and Sunset Flash — it is thought that the Japanese horse Jun Light Bolt, standing now at 8-1 in London and breaking from the six hole, poses the greatest threat. He’s fast and has been mopping up in Japan.

There are five horses in the tier of runners whose odds are just a bit higher than those of Jun Light Bolt, and they are in ascending order of odds Crown Pride, Emblem Road, Scotland Yard, Panthalassa, and Geoglyph. Of them, the 12-1 Crown Pride has been running and training well and the Japanese, in that sense of having and gladly running their runners in the big races, are here for the season in the Middle East to stay. No matter what happens to Crown Pride, Panthalassa and Geoglyph tomorrow, we will be looking for them next month in Dubai.