[COLOR=rgba(77, 76, 76, 0.9)]Caldera Race Recap
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Caldera was an improved second today at Oaklawn Park.
He broke much better and showed increased early speed (not a surprise) to stalk from the fence in a joint second as a longshot ran off to open up by a wide margin and set solid splits. Caldera seemed to idle a bit as they entered the second bend, and jockey Keith Asmussen had to really ask him to maintain his position. He started to get going again at the top of the lane, and was taken out in the clear to get room to lengthen his stride (this was absolutely the right call by Keith). Caldera slowly gained ground to race into second, but it was much more of a grinding move rather than one showing much turn of foot.
This was undoubtedly a step in the right direction for Caldera, but he doesn’t seem to have fully figured things out yet—you’ll hear Keith say that he was a bit passive during points of the race. He just didn’t seem fully clued in to the task at hand, but hopefully this additional race experience will help the lightbulb come on for next time. Adding blinkers might also make sense, but we’ll let our Hall of Fame trainer make that call.
All in all, it’s tough to be too disappointed with a second-place finish and we’ll look for Caldera to take another step forward next time out—he should be pretty tough if he does
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Caldera was an improved second today at Oaklawn Park.
He broke much better and showed increased early speed (not a surprise) to stalk from the fence in a joint second as a longshot ran off to open up by a wide margin and set solid splits. Caldera seemed to idle a bit as they entered the second bend, and jockey Keith Asmussen had to really ask him to maintain his position. He started to get going again at the top of the lane, and was taken out in the clear to get room to lengthen his stride (this was absolutely the right call by Keith). Caldera slowly gained ground to race into second, but it was much more of a grinding move rather than one showing much turn of foot.
This was undoubtedly a step in the right direction for Caldera, but he doesn’t seem to have fully figured things out yet—you’ll hear Keith say that he was a bit passive during points of the race. He just didn’t seem fully clued in to the task at hand, but hopefully this additional race experience will help the lightbulb come on for next time. Adding blinkers might also make sense, but we’ll let our Hall of Fame trainer make that call.
All in all, it’s tough to be too disappointed with a second-place finish and we’ll look for Caldera to take another step forward next time out—he should be pretty tough if he does