Two champions leave no gray area

Gray Thoroughbreds make up about 10 percent of the population, which already put World Approval and Unique Bella in a class of their own. Then, as Eclipse Award champions, they joined an even more exclusive club.

If there were any doubts they would pick up in 2018 where they left off at the end of 2017, they were erased last Saturday. At about 1:37 p.m. Pacific, Unique Bella reached the end of the Grade 2 Santa Maria Stakes nine lengths clear of her closest competition. Then, an hour later and 2,100 miles east, World Approval took the stage in the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Stakes and won for the sixth time in his last seven starts.

Champions are supposed to act like this, although fans hold their breath until they do. World Approval’s half-length margin over the occasionally exciting Forge was not as close as it looked. Then again, neither was Unique Bella’s.

“I thought she’d win,” said her trainer, Jerry Hollendorfer, as the gray filly swept past the wire. “But I didn’t think she’d win like that.”

Champions will do that, uncork a huge effort from out of the blue. The fact that Mike Smith was “sitting as quiet as a church mouse,” as Michael Wrona intoned, made Unique Bella’s gaudy display all the more impressive. At least he could have thrown a cross.

Although, he gave her a look at the whip. About five strides past the sixteenth pole, with no opposition in sight, Unique Bella turned her head to the right and dropped the bit, as if something caught her eye.

“It was strange,” Smith said. “I kind of showed her the whip a little to go, ‘Hey, stay focused!’ and she got right back into the bridle. Jogging back, I looked over there where she did it, and there were a bunch of photographers. It made me wonder if she heard all those cameras going off. That can happen when they have an easy race like that.”

The ease with which Unique Bella handles her two-turn races should inspire the imagination for the year to come. Many speed horses find bravery going from a sprint to a route and then revert to their shorter inclinations if tested further. Unique Bella has shown she thrives on turning twice, winning all three of her middle-distance races now with speed figures appropriate to her development.

“As a 3-year-old, she ran really well going long that day at Santa Anita,” Smith said, referring to the 2017 Santa Ysabel Stakes, at 1 1/16 miles. “And she beat a real good filly in Abel Tasman, who made a big run at her. With her high cruising speed and her size, I’ve always thought she’d get a route. But we still need to do a few things to prove it 100 percent.”

World Approval, on the other hand, has very little left to prove – other than longevity. At age 5 last year, he turned a corner from useful stakes horse to the best in his division. At 6, indications are that the gelded son of Northern Afleet should be even better.

“I thought in the paddock the other day he was about as good as I’ve ever seen him,” Mark Casse said. “He’s never going to be a big, robust horse, which is probably a good thing. I recently saw a statistic that an intact horse has a three times greater chance of having a fatal injury than a filly or a gelding, and I think a lot of that has to do with their weight.”

World Approval, bred and owned by Charlotte Weber’s Live Oak Plantation, was gelded as a young horse and ran twice as a 2-year-old for Christophe Clement before being transferred to Casse.

“I’m not surprised,” Casse said. “He can still be a little mean. I think too many people worry about gelding, when in fact it might be the best thing for the horse. One thing about owners like Mrs. Weber, John Oxley, and Gary Barber – they don’t hesitate for a second to geld one. We gelded about 15 in the last two weeks.”

Casse made international headlines when he sent champion mare Tepin to Royal Ascot for a victory in the Queen Anne. A similar trip was considered for World Approval to head to Dubai for the $6 million Dubai Turf at 1,800 meters on the Dubai World Cup program next month. But the idea was scrapped.

“Nothing bothers him, and he travels well, so that’s never a problem,” Casse said. “But we never were that keen on going. The distance I think is outside his comfort zone, and the race is a one-turn mile and one-eighth. One of the things that makes our horse so good is his ability to scoot around our sharper turns in North America. We’d be giving away that advantage to some of the best horses in the world.”

Then there is the record of U.S. horses in the Dubai Turf (formerly the Duty Free), which has been run at 1,800 meters since 2000. Casse was asked if he knew how many North American-trained horse had won the race. He paused. “Zero?” he replied. Zero is correct. “There’s plenty for him to do in North America, especially if the idea is winning the Breeders’ Cup Mile again,” Casse added. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”