Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem for Jan. 23, 2025

A good Thursday to you all! It’s time for Thursday Thoughts, my weekly column here on TwinSpires where I pretty much get to write about whatever’s on my mind in the world of horse racing. This week features the Pegasus World Cup (G1) at Gulfstream Park. Formerly the Donn Handicap, the Pegasus World Cup was changed to a $1 million buy-in event with a $12 million purse nine years ago. The Donn had a great history and the Pegasus has carved out a very unique run of it’s own so far. 

I reached out to my friend Pete Aiello (racecaller at Gulfstream Park) to ask him what he remembered about the first Pegasus World Cup back in 2017. It featured California Chrome vs. Arrogate, a rematch of their thrilling Breeders’ Cup Classic a few months earlier, and I remember people saying at the time that if it wasn’t for the Pegasus, California Chrome would have retired after the Classic. The PWC enabled us to see him run twice more, but California Chrome didn’t do much running in the Pegasus. He was all-in before they even got to the second turn, and Arrogate cruised home. It was fascinating listening to Pete describe what he remembered about that day because none of his memories had to do with the race itself. It was all about stuff that happened behind the scenes or just his emotions about it all. To me that’s usually the good stuff that sticks with you. 

The huge purse editions of the Pegasus would draw full fields, but they lacked depth. In the inaugural running, the third choice in the betting was a whopping 16-1! Gun Runner won the second edition at 8-5, with West Coast being the obvious second choice, and the rest appeared overmatched. City of Light was 9-5 when he beat 3-2 Accelerate the following year and the third choice was all the way out to 9-1. I get an eight-figure purse being the big calling card, but the first three editions of the Pegasus weren't great races. Oddly enough, probably the most evenly matched edition of the race occurred the first year the Pegasus was reduced to its current $3 million purse. 

This year’s race looks super competitive; it's exactly what I want from a race like this. You have a bunch of top handicap division horses, a solid filly in Power Squeeze, and a full starting gate. I think you can make a case for several of the runners even though I think that Saudi Crown is going to go gate to wire. But there’s maybe only two or three horses that I couldn’t make some sort of case for as win candidates or at least hit-the-board possibilities. That to me is an interesting race. Stars are fun to watch, but I’d much rather have an interesting race with lots of angles and possibilities. I’ll take that any day over a two horse match up with 10 other also-rans. 

Races ebb and flow all the time. When people got annoyed about the Belmont (G1) being run at a shorter distance last year than its normal 1 1/2 miles, I don’t think they accounted for the fact that all races usually have some changes or shifts in their histories. The Pegasus has settled into a spot on the calendar where it’s now a very important older horse Grade 1. Which is kind of what it was in the Donn Hanidcap era of its existence. And I’m ok that they tried some new things with it. Maybe it really didn’t create all that good of races, but it certainly did help create arguably one of the top racing days on the calendar. Handle for Pegasus Day is miles ahead of where the Donn handle used to be. So hard to say the concept has failed even though the purse has come back down to this stratosphere. 

Everyone enjoy the weekend!