Panthalassa Narrowly Takes The $10 Million Victor’s Cut, Country Grammer Places, And Cafe Pharoah Shows

Japanese long-shot Panthalassa raged through the nine furlongs of the $20-million Saudi Cup on Saturday in Riyadh and won handily. In the last furlong, the Japanese horses seemed within a knife’s edge of creating an all-Nippon trifecta but were thwarted by the resourceful Frankie Dettori and the sturdy Country Grammer, who managed quite a blaze in the last furlong and looked about to overtake Panthalassa, who held on to scrape out the win. There will be a healthy debate among the cognoscenti as to whether Country Grammer would have overtaken Panthalassa had the race been a furlong longer, or whether Panthalassa was, still, managing to win going away.

In effect, Country Grammer repeated his furious place performance in this very race last year, giving his trainer Bob Baffert the unusual distinction in the four-year history of the race to be the only trainer in the world whose one champion placed in consecutive Saudi Cups.

For his part, Baffert’s other, far more beloved and highly-touted Taiba very much did not live up to his billing, who lost the race early, could not muster anything like a stretch run and, after his much-touted “maturity” as supposedly evidenced by his Malibu Stakes win in December, the colt gave something early, arguably a bit too much, and in the late going seemed simply to want to return to his finicky adolescent ways. He finished a lackluster eighth, much in the mold of his Kentucky Derby twelfth-place freakout last May.

That certainly came as a surprise to his many backers, matched only by the bookmakers’ surprise with the size and heft of the payouts on Panthalassa, who went off in London at a bracing 10-1.

So much for growing up: Neither Taiba nor his Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith were a factor in the race. It’s back to school for Taiba, Baffert and owner Amr Zedan, who will all be taking a moment to digest the performance. Perhaps an innovative live reading of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in his stall before bedtime at night would help the colt gain some perspective on the necessity of growing up, and into his sport.