Arrogate sails to stunning Dubai World Cup win

Arrogate is officially the most lucrative racehorse in the world after writing a page of history at the Dubai World Cup at Meydan, winning Saturday’s first prize of $ 6,000,000 and the highest prize money in its career.
After the success in the Breeder’s Cup Classic and the Pegasus World Cup Invitational, Bob Baffert’s four-year-old is a latter-day “Seabiscuit“, starting out slowly, almost in a cumbersome fashion with little chance of victory before jockey Mike Smith unleashes its immense stride and starts to make some ground on the rest of the field.The comeback king has had to come up through the school of hard knocks in the literal fashion, having been had its teeth knocked back as a yearling following a kick by another horse. One tooth became infected and was removed, which slows down its eating, and cost it nearly two years of racing.Baffert as trainer has been patient, developing training and strategy to play on its strengths on the gallop.
The Saturday’s race in Dubai was probably the one that best describes the history of this amazing horse who has devoured the distance after meter after a slow and awkward start, but he was still nearly 10 lengths adrift of the pace halfway around the far turn.There is no Arrogate is one of the very best dirt runners as he made ground around the bend with ease and then lengthened again, closing down and then catching Gun Runner, the leader, with a furlong still to cover.
Smith rode the exceptional Zenyatta in the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Classic. But Arrogate is even better than Zenyatta and proved it with an astonishing performance to shrug off the distance it needed to make up.Arrogate with $17million in winnings is now the richest horse in the world, ahead of the newly retired California Chrome at $15million dollars.
The new target now is even more ambitious, as it closes in on the retired Japanese thoroughbred Orfevre.
photo: arrogate (USA) (Bob Baffert – Mike Smith) Dubai World Sponsored by Emirates Airline at the DWC at Meydan on March 25th, 2017. (Credit: Dubai Racing Club // Andrew Watkins)
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Marzia Cucchetti