Azul Leon

Azul Leon at left in July 08 and sire LionHeart (below) out of a (KY Derby favorite) Cure The Blues Mare. Owned by Joseph Lacombe. Trained by Doug O'Neill.

Why would you breed(or breed to sell) to the ordinary looking Lion Heart and his $20,000 stud fee? Well, there's some Storm Cat in there somewhere, and in this case you get a decently conformed Cure the Blues type horse that just yesterday almost caught a bunch of 6f sprinters stretching out 7f. And, BTW nice story with Jack o'Lantern and that 66 year old trainer, even though it's probably predictibable that we've seen the last of that horse.

As to Azul, can we see the nice performance of 11/23/08 coming from the training, as follows:
8/31 :48.8
9/14 :49.9
9/21 :1:02.6
9/28 1 1/16th race
10/18: :1:14.4
10/25 1 1/16 race
11/9: 48.6

Well....

would be the answer. Though Azul looked decent in the stretch there you'd have to guess, based on training (and what Azul does on slow days is unknown though it's thought he would gallop every other day an unremarkable 1.5 miles), that this horse is on the bare edge in terms of actual conditioning. 7 works in 2.5 months is 11 days between works. Why? And, looks like about 1 work between races spaced 30 days apart. They decided on a 6f breeze 7 days out from the Breeder's Cup. For the Preview there's a 4f breeze 14 days out. Smacks of inconsistency to me, but, what do I know? Guess you could argue that since Azul finished 8th in BC and 2nd yesterday that he thrives on little work(???).

Will Azul fall victim to the O'Neill 50% every 3 months injury rate? I think they're playing Russian Roulette with the horse, but, we'll see. Test of our common sense possibly coming with Azul.

Training: Wow. What a mental effort to train two horses Moving stuff. Heavy lifting.
Tack work again was done through the pheasants and deer bounding all over the place. The two year old propped once. Is Nob getting pea hearted in his old age, or does being careful through all this make sense? I'd expect when we lengthen the tack work this week the horses will adjust.
Art: 1 mile trot-gallop.
Rod: 1 mile mostly trot. Horse acted as if he'd never been out there.
Both horses than did our nicest riderless sprint work to date. It was planned as 4 x 1f, but but the time you get them into it and out of it they've done 3f and so it was more like 4x 3f though only the middle furlong was all out. The two year old flashing some Johnny Eves type talent. He looks like Johnny, which called my attention to the race. He's got a long way to go, but it's nice to see that major league rear end chugging around there.