By most people’s standards, John Sadler had a good year in 2023, when he finished among the top 10 Southern California thoroughbred trainers in race wins and purse earnings.
But for the man who’d spent 2022 on top of the world as trainer of Flightline, last year was a comedown.
” ’23 was a rebuilding year,” Sadler said this week.
Sadler can take a step – maybe two – back to the heights Sunday when he runs Subsanador in the $500,000 Grade I Santa Anita Handicap and Scatify in the $300,000 Grade II San Felipe Stakes for 3-year-olds, the featured races on a card postponed from Saturday because of the rain forecast.
It won’t be easy.
Although the San Felipe field got softer when trainer Bob Baffert said Saturday he will scratch Nysos from this race and wait for the April 6 Santa Anita Derby, Scatify must face two other strong Baffert horses. On Santa Anita’s original morning line, Nysos was the 1-5 favorite, with Scatify and Baffert-trained Imagination the 6-1 co-second choices, and Baffert’s Wine Me Up at 8-1.
In the Santa Anita Handicap, Subsanador, a 5-year-old Argentine import, is 5-1 on the morning line behind San Pasqual Stakes winner Newgrange (5-2), New Orleans shipper Highland Falls (3-1) and Baffert-trained Newgate (4-1).
There’s reason to expect Subsanador and Scatify to improve on their recent results, and if either wins, it will be Sadler’s first Grade I or II victory since Flightline was retired undefeated following an 8¼-length romp in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland, in Kentucky, on Nov. 5, 2022.
Last year was the first since 2013 that Sadler’s stable failed to produce a Grade I victory.
Having to get over the retirement of one of American racing’s all-time greats is a high-class problem to which few trainers can relate. Another at Santa Anita these days is Baffert, who trained Triple Crown winners American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018. Baffert said this week it was “sort of depressing” when…
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