>Santa Anita/ February 7 / Race 8 / 4:00 PM PST

The Grade 2, $500,000 San Antonio Invitational is that rarest of things in horse racing circa 2015: It is a Grade 2 that in a just world would be a Grade 1.
We have Hoppertunity. We have Shared Belief. We have California Chrome. We have a big fat purse at Santa Anita on a Saturday afternoon. We have a Grade 1–technicalities be damned.

The San Antonio will be run at a mile and 1/8 on the main track. It has a field of nine horses. According to the TimeformUS Pace Projector, the race will be run at a pace that favors horses who are on or near the early lead. This figures to give frontrunner Alfa Bird a nice advantage, and he figures to need it, and then some, because according to the Pace Projector, at the opening half-mile, Alfa Bird will find himself being stalked by three horses who are side by side: Hoppertunity, Shared Belief, and California Chrome.

We have been handicapping races for TimeformUS for some time now. We have handicapped thousands of races with TimeformUS data. We have studied the Pace Projector’s projection thousands of times. None has looked quite like this, with three horses of this caliber lined up in a row.

This race is full of talented horses, all of whom deserve respect… Ok, that’s enough of that. Let’s get to the Big 3:

Hoppertunity (4-1): This Baffert colt was no match for California Chrome on the 2014 Kentucky Derby Trail. Indeed, he was no match for Bayern in his debut, and he was no match for Intense Holiday (awful trip notwithstanding) in the Risen Star. But this race is not being run in the first part of 2014. It is being run in the first part of 2015, and Hoppertunity enters it fresh off the best race of his career. Yes, he got a cozy trip in the Grade 2 San Pasqual. His rider made smart decisions and things broke Hoppertunity’s way at a pivotal moment in the race. But Hoppertunity capitalized, won the race decisively, and earned a lifetime top speed figure of 116. That is the type of number the repetition of which can overturn what we thought we knew about the balance of power between Hoppertunity and California Chrome. And something else is worth mentioning. Baffert got that number out of Hoppertunity at a time when Baffert’s barn, as a group, was not firing. Baffert was sending out dud after dud both before and after the San Pasqual. Well, as everyone who follows Southern California racing was expecting (or at least ought to have been expecting), Baffert suddenly became red-hot.

Shared Belief (7-5): We thought he was the best horse (albeit not the best bet) going into the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Classic, a race in which he was effectively eliminated at the start. He returned in the Malibu, at a distance shorter than his best, and he faced a pace scenario that seemed almost designed to prevent him from winning in impressive fashion. The leader’s pace figures in that race (color-coded blue on our PPs, signifying a slow pace) were 85 and 100. Shared Belief’s were 84 and 97. Shared Belief managed a hard-fought neck victory over Conquest Two Step (who returned to win impressively), and though his performance was neither sexy nor flashy, it was, in its own way, impressive. Now Shared Belief stretches out to nine furlongs for a brilliant trainer, Jerry Hollendorfer, who gets a 93 rating going sprint to route. Moreover, for some time now, of all the trainers in Southern California, Baffert included, Hollendorfer has been the one who most consistently gets top efforts out of his horses. We’ll see what he gets out of Shared Belief today in a race that for obvious reasons has overtones of revenge and redemption. If he gets his best, we believe that Shared Belief will win this race.

California Chrome (6-5): Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner briefly looked like a stripped horse. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Any horse who wins those two races has earned the right to go flat for a while. But California Chrome righted himself in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, pairing his top of 118. Then he returned to win a Grade 1 turf race in which he ran a first-call pace figure of 141 and a second-call pace figure of 139 and managed to stay strong all the way to the wire. That is the kind of thing exceptional horses do when they are, well, back. If California Chrome fires his best shot today, nothing is going to be easy for anybody.

The play: Shared Belief.