Steve Asmussen believes Rachel Alexandra is ready
As befits one of the two divas of American horse racing, Rachel Alexandra will be upstaging the main event at Saratoga this weekend.
The Travers Stakes may usually be the hot ticket for the entire Saratoga meeting but it is having to take a back seat this year.
Whether Rachel Alexandra makes the main event at the Breeders’ Cup is still open to speculation, and there will be plenty of that between now and the first weekend in November, but one small question will be answered on Sunday.
The Grade One Personal Ensign Stakes will be the filly’s first attempt at a full 10 furlongs. She got most of the way there last season when she beat Mine That Bird by a length in the Preakness, over nine-and-a-half furlongs, on her first run for Steve Asmussen.
That run came off the back of Rachel Alexandra winning the Kentucky Oaks by nearly 20 lengths and she followed up the Preakness by winning the Haskell Invitational and Woodwood Stakes to put her at the top of the mountain as she claimed the Horse of the Year title. This year has been a long climb back for both horse and trainer with two defeats followed by two confidence-boosting victories in lower-grade races but Asmussen now believes his filly is ready to get back to where she once belonged.
A muddy training track may not have been the ideal conditions for her last workout before the Personal Ensign but Asmussen was happy enough after an easy half-mile. “I was very concerned about the weather but they did a good job with the racetrack,” Asmussen said to the Daily Racing Form. “It was safe and she went over it well.”
The early-season push for a meeting between Rachel Alexandra and the other queen of American racing, Zenyatta, has thus far failed to materialise. The chances of it taking place before the Breeders’ Cup now appear to be dashed with Zenyatta’s trainer, John Shirreffs, deciding to run his mare at Hollywood Park in her final prep before defending her crown in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs on November 6th.
The connections of Rachel Alexandra could still opt for the Ladies’ Classic, over a furlong shorter, on the first day of the meeting and the Personal Ensign will be a yardstick at least in terms of distance and Asmussen appears to believe that his horse is getting to her best level of form using last season as his yardstick. “I’m very pleased with her right now,” he said. “She’s a year older now and carries a little more weight than she did when she ran here last summer. She’s more relaxed, happy, and loose. She knows what her job is now. Her last race was very good and hopefully this race will be a building block, a bridge, towards the rest of the year.”
Rachel Alexandra is expected to face her stiffest test of the season so far in the Personal Ensign, which is expected to include Grade One winner Life At Ten, and Asmussen needs to find out now whether his stable star is at her shining best and ready for what could be the acid test in terms of a run in the Classic. "I think it's time," he said. "It's still a big question and Sunday's the best time to answer it.
"A lot of comparisons are made to last year. When she stepped into the barn it was four days after the Oaks and just 10 days before a Classic. The level of pressure that was put on her at that time, and for her to step up, hasn't been matched yet this year, but we feel that there's a lot of her left and hopefully for the rest of the year it will get back to that stage."
After all, centre stage is where a diva is supposed to be.
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