Race Day Tips, Bets You Should Make, And Charlatan’s Battle With Knicks Go

The $30 million Saudi Cup weekend is in full swing, and, as any $20 million purse for a single horse race would be expected to do, the Cup — to be run in Riyadh later today, at 12:40 p.m. EDT — has magnetized fourteen horses out of disparate stables to the Gulf for the one-turn, 1800-meter, almost one-and-one-eighth-mile race. Today’s expected intramural match will be between the frontrunning Kentucky-bred Americans, the hot-rod winner of the most recent Pegasus, Knicks Go, and the lightly-raced Bob Baffert-trained star four-year-old, Charlatan. Both horses will break from the center of the 14-horse field, from post positions 4 and 9, respectively, with plenty of time before the turn to take their fight to the front. As they like.

The highly touted match race-within-the-race carries over into the odds. Both are, at the moment, close: Charlatan is, at first glance, improbably lower, at 7-5, and, despite his big recent wins, Knicks Go trails Charlatan at 5-2. Both have reportedly shipped well, which is a bit of a trick, getting to the peninsula. The victor’s take of the Cup purse is a flat 50%, or $10 million, not too shabby for an evening’s work.

Charlatan is a comer — “improving” is the laconic horseman’s description attached to him — pictured above, the horse won the Malibu Stakes last December with the formidable Mike Smith up. He won his subsequent three races, was disqualified for one for a dru He followed that with three wins, which is arguably why he’s edged out Knicks Go as the favorite. Smith has made the trip to Saudi Arabia to be with his mount for today’s run.

Players will note that the time difference between the U.S. and the Middle East will cause the race to be run early in the afternoon. So, be advised that you should be up and have done your pre-race calisthenics so as to shoehorn your plays in before the 12:40 p.m. post time.

The not-so-secret sauce behind the morning line’s rather strong Charlatan lean is the oddsmakers’ belief in Hall-of-Fame trainer Baffert, who had two horses in last year’s first-ever Saudi Cup. To help us parse this curious international field, and the huge pot of money waiting at the end of the two minutes for them, is the Bluegrass Wise Man ™, a Kentucky-bred horseman and owner who has been so generous to us in this space in seasons past. But before we get to him, below please find the horses, in order of post position, with their morning lines odds.

Nota bene: In a layered curiosity for Western players, in Riyadh the horses bear two numbers, the assigned “program number”, which corresponds to their saddle cloth, and a separate post-position number. If a betting site is numbering the horses according to the program — for instance, at Twinspires — the player is obligated to take great care to remember that that’s not the post position. We present both views below, first, here is the field in ordinary post-position order:

(Post position, Horse, Morning Line)

1. Chuwa Wizard, 15-1
2. Bangkok, 30-1
3. Great Scot, 50-1
4. Max Player, 20-1
5. Knicks Go, 5-2
6. Global Giant, 30-1
7. Tacitus, 15-1
8. Sleepy Eyes Todd, 20-1
9. Charlatan, 7-5
10. Military Law, 12-1
11. Simsir, 30-1
12. Mishriff, 6-1
13. Derevo, 30-1
14. Extra Elusive, 30-1

(Source: twinspires.com, 2/20/2021)

Below is the field, organized with the Saudi Cup program number, with the post-position number following. There are 14 horses in the field. The 1-horse was scratched early, which is why today’s program numbers run from 2 to 15.:

(Saddle Cloth, Post Position, Horse, Morning Line)

2, 2. Bangkok (Andrew Balding, Ryan Moore), 30-1

3, 9. Charlatan (Bob Baffert, Mike Smith), 7-5

4, 1. Chuwa Wizard (Ryuji Okubo, Keita Tosaki), 15-1

5, 14. Extra Elusive (Roger Charlton, Hollie Doyle), 30-1

6, 6. Global Giant (John Gosden, Frankie Dettori), 30-1

7, 3. Great Scot (Abdullah Mushrif, Adel Alfouraidi), 50-1

8, 5. Knicks Go (Brad Cox, Joel Rosario), 5-2

9, 4. Max Player (Steve Asmussen, Mickaël Barzalona), 20-1

10, 10. Military Law (Musabbeh Al Mheiri, Antonio Fresu), 12-1

11, 12. Mishriff (John Gosden, David Egan), 6-1

12, 11. Simsir (Fawzi Nass, Adrie de Vries), 30-1

13, 8. Sleepy Eyes Todd (Miguel Angel Silva, Alexis Moreno), 20-1

14, 7. Tacitus (Bill Mott, William Buick), 15-1

15, 13. Derevo (Abdullah Mushrif, Cristian Demuro), 30-1

With no further ado, it’s our distinct pleasure to bring you the Bluegrass Wise Man ™.

This whole match-race thing is getting to be routine. Let’s dive in on our nominal second-favorite. You liking Knicks Go?

Bluegrass Wise Man ™ : Liking him in some ways, and not in others. I like it that he’s a Kentucky-bred, but that is not a surprise. I was impressed by his Pegasus wire-to-wire run, and I very much like his ability not to lose his concentration and stay within himself. It ain’t the longest race in the year, this one, so we know he can do the distance. I’m hearing he traveled well, so I don’t think he’s out-of-sorts. We won’t really know that until he races, but…

Is there something about him that you don’t trust?

Bluegrass Wise Man ™ : How to put this? Can be that he’s still a bit young in the mind, even though he’s four? That’s a question. Again, I like him, and I’m not training him so I don’t know him that well, but from where I sit, he seems kind of a three-year-old accidentally in the body of a classic four-year-old. Some horses are easy to know, and you can get to know ’em quick. Born that way. Other horses tell you about themselves more slowly. Neither way is right, or wrong. We know Knicks Go a little bit, and he let us see more of himself in the Pegasus, and it’s all been good. I respect that win. But his test today is to go up against a fine horse in Charlatan after having traveled 7000 miles to the east. New track, very new place for him. He’s got to run hard. In fact he’s got to be the best that he can be. That track can be unforgiving. If he wins, he will earn it.

Sounds like you’re saying it’s gonna be tight out there. Which is to say, against Charlatan.

Bluegrass Wise Man ™ : I like Charlatan too, very much, but maybe not quite at the odds diffeerence that the morning line is trying to tell us. Which says several things. First, talk about lightly-raced. Now, partly we can blame the pandemic, and partly we can just say, okay, that’s the way it rolls sometimes. Horses mature at different rates, and do different things. That said, it’s Bob, right? Bob doesn’t mess around. A $10 million winner’s cut is gonna draw a lotta horses anywhere it is offered, but if anything goes wrong with anything, a trip to Saudi can ruin your year with a horse, and you are back to ground zero with the whatever campaign you thought you were planning. In other words, Bob pointed his horse at this race. What I mean by that is that this is part of Charlatan’s plan. It’s not just hey, I got an idea, let’s drop over to Riyadh and pick up $ 10 million. Charlatan’s an improving horse, and he’s serious. What I like most about him is that he doesn’t care what kind of race he’s in, he just strolls out and wins. Every time. That’s also why he’s the current fave, not just Baffert. Now, adding Mike Smith to that is the icing on the cake. Mike, right? If anybody can give him the trip, Mike has done it and can do it.

Which means?

Bluegrass Wise Man ™ : You get the feeling that Knicks Go knows he is doing some of the same things he always does, but in some place very different. I don’t think that matters one whit to Charlatan. He sees a track, he’s ready to go. If I were Knicks Go’s connections, I’d worry about that a little.

See anybody else out there you like?

Bluegrass Wise Man ™ : Not much of anybody, no. May play an exotic with Max Player, but I don’t think Tacitus would really have the stuff to take on Charlatan or Knicks Go, and I don’t see much else in the field that is going to give the two top ones any kind of a run. I don’t know Mishriff, so I don’t know why he’s priced quite that low. If he decides to run with the big boys he could be a kind of a home-wrecker — I don’t think at the wire, but maybe up the backstretch. What I mean by that is maybe he could get in Sleepy Eyes Todd ‘s way, or come around on Max Player. I don’t see him winning the race.