Daaher Not Done....Quite Yet

- Daaher got a 114 Beyer for his win in the Cigar Mile. No big surprise that Midnight Lute regressed a bit - the Thorograph sheets ranked his Sprint equal to his record-low Forego, and he'd had much more spacing between his recent races. But I thought he actually ran really well, conceding nine pounds, ample ground on the turn, and an uncontested lead. And Bob Baffert will tell you that Garrett Gomez should have let him run freely as he wanted to do on the backstretch.

Winning trainer Kiaran McLaughlin said: “It’s hard to believe. We won our first Grade 1 in this country just last May with Invasor (Pimlico Special) and we’ve got seven this year.” [NYRA] And he said of Daaher: "..I think he’s a great stallion prospect when his racing career’s over." That's nice, though I'm sure we can wait to see those little Daahers running around. Daaher will likely have one of those conservative retirement party type campaigns, carefully planned, with minimal starts. Midnight Lute is a Breeders' Cup winner and a probable champion, so, with a lucrative stud career assured, his connections can be more eclectic. Hopefully they'll stick to their plans of stretching him out and pointing to the Classic despite his failure thus far to win beyond seven furlongs.

Next for Daaher is the Donn and Dubai for either the group I Godolphin Mile or Dubai World Cup. [Bloodhorse] That's the same path taken by Invasor before his premature retirement last year. Some feel that he earned the Eclipse for older horse with those wins, a notion with which I respectfully disagree. I don't think the World Cup should be factored in, and his one North American race, though pretty spectacular, was not as much so, in my opinion, as Lawyer Ron's Whitney. So if you're going to go by one race, I think that effort by Lawyer Ron trumps the Donn, and, for that matter, probably any other race run in 2007, doncha think?

By the way, Shadwell was the buyer, for $4.5 million, of Daaher's full sister Spun Sugar, who is in foal to AP Indy. So it will be a family affair when Daaher is rushed off to stud sometime within the next 11 months or so.