The Grade 1 Summer Stakes at Woodbine

There is a colt in Saturday’s Grade 1 Summer Stakes at Woodbine that I have had my eye on since his debut. Interestingly enough, he winds up on the same card as Notable Speech. If you have read me, followed me, or followed Past the Wire for at least the past few years, you probably remember I said Notable Speech would be a Grade 1 stakes winner after I watched his first race. He went on to become exactly that.

Now we have Al Hudaiba. He is already a Group 2 winner in the UK, having beaten the highly regarded Abraham Lincoln in the Superlative Stakes at Newmarket, but I believe he gets his first Grade 1 right here in the Summer Stakes. I have thought this colt had monster potential from the beginning, and nothing I have seen since has changed my mind. If anything, it has reinforced it.

The Superlative showed me plenty. Al Hudaiba went to the inside fence and simply outfought the Aidan O’Brien runner. It was as game a win as you will see from a young horse. He had every opportunity to give it up and he didn’t. He wanted it. That matters to me, especially with a two-year-old who is still figuring out what this whole racing thing is about.

And that is really the issue with him right now. He is still learning. In his second start he dumped Tom Marquand. Last time out in the Group 2 Vintage at Goodwood, he had his mind on just about everything except racing. He was turning his head, looking around, running in spurts, fighting William Buick and basically doing everything you don’t want a horse to do when you are trying to win a Group 2. He still almost won. He was beaten only half a length in what turned out to be a key race.

That is the part that has my attention. You are watching a colt make mistakes, waste energy, lose focus and fight his rider, and he is still right there against good horses. That is not something you teach. The talent is there. The question is whether and when the mind catches up to it.

Saturday, he gets a setup I think can help make that happen. He goes second time in blinkers and stretches to a mile at Woodbine. He gets that long Woodbine backstretch, the long stretch home, and I expect a slower, more manageable pace than what he has been dealing with overseas. To me, all of that gives him a chance to settle, get comfortable and finally concentrate on the job in front of him.

If he does, I think we are going to see what this monster can really do.

The full 12-horse field should hopefully give us a fair price. I am not looking to get cute with him. I think Al Hudaiba is the single on the card. More than that, he is one I think is going to be fun to watch, because when you have followed a young horse from the beginning and you believe there is another level sitting there waiting to come out, races like this are why you play the game.

Two races later, in the Grade 1 Woodbine Mile, we get to watch Notable Speech deal with Deterministic as he tries to work his way back to another Breeders’ Cup Mile. That is a terrific race in its own right, and seeing Notable Speech back on a card like this brings things full circle for me.

But Saturday, the monster is in the Summer.