Once again, I shudder to think what Saturday's handle at Gulfstream Park might have been if the sport wasn't in the process of expiring. Since Gulfstream doesn't keep attendance figures due to the fact that casino and poker room players enter free so there's no way to separate one type of player from another, we have no idea of how many people were imitating sardines in the infield or the various other viewing locations. 

    But from the looks we got on TVG, the place was in overflow mode. The handle for the superb Florida Derby program reached $32,082,270, and only the Breeders' Cup has produced a higher day at the track. Last year's handle was $27.2 million. 

    It's less than 24 hours from Nyquist's dynamite performance in the $1 million Derby, and the pundits are already making excuses for Mohaymen. He had a bad post (No. 9), he was outside, he never got to the rail, he went wide on the turn, etc. Do they think he'll have it any better in Louisville? With 20 horses in the gate he may encounter a worse trip by far. Great horses have overcome infinitely worse trips than Mo did yesterday. Great horses are supposed to overcome adversity.

    For the week before the race, the same pundits were punditing that Mo had a big edge; he was at a track he had romped over twice, he was at home, Nyquist had to cross the country, he had never been over the strip, etc., etc., etc. So Nyquist buried him. The pundits, I find, are often severely tripped up by their egos. 

    Does it mean that Mo is toast? Of course not. But for this day, he wasn't even near up to the task, despite all of the aforementioned advantages. 

    Nyquist, on the other hand, is something special. He sold at Fasig-Tipton Florida's March sale for $400,000, thus collecting the bonus of $1 million for being a Fasig-Florida Derby winner. I don't know if anyone keeps tabs on this, but it's quite probable that his $3,333,600 in earnings is the most by any horse in history as of April 3 of his 3-year-old year. With the cash from the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, the $600,000 from yesterday and the bonus, Who could have done anything more? 

    The son of Uncle Mo (why is Mohaymen by Tapit instead of Uncle Mo?) is now 7-for-7, with six graded stakes victories, and the Reddam-O'Neill-Gutierrez triumvirate has a chance to do for racing what American Pharoah did last year and California Chrome did the year before. It's called exhilaration, and it would put the mortuaries on hold a little longer. 

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