GRAN PREMIO HIPÓDROMO CHILE (G1)
The 2026 renewal of the Gran Premio Hipódromo Chile was certainly a good result for Constitution, who stands at Winstar Farms for $110,000. He was responsible for 4 of the first 5 horses to cross the line, including the winner SHARK and continues to be the leading son of Tapit at stud. Shark wasn’t coming into this race unnoticed and he came into this race on the back of a relatively comfortable win in one of the trials for this race, the G3 Pedro Del Río Talavera over this course and distance. His data compares well with his rivals. He was one of only 2 horses to record a run-out speed above 50 km/h (50.9 km/h) and his late speed figure of 54.17 km/h was certainly faster than the runner-up. However, whilst he is a consistent performer and he clearly stays this far, if you were a supporter of the beaten favourite and the eventual runner-up Spazzatura, there is definitely a chance that you may be asking what might have been. Here’s a link to the replay:
The race was controlled by Lonwhite (4th), who broke smartly from stall 4 and was quickly across to the inside rail as he dropped below 14.5s for the opening furlong. That allowed Kevin Espina to control his mount in front and by the halfway point, Lonwhite had established a sizable advantage of over half a second. He couldn’t sustain such a pace and in reality, he probably did well to hold on for 4th place, but what this helped to do was spread the field and allow those in behind to have the racing room to lengthen. Spazzatura was the horse to do that best and when he went through the gaps around the final turn, he seemed to be the most likely winner as he hit the front. However, despite Oscar Ulloa’s best efforts, his mount drifted markedly to his right and despite maintaining his stride frequency average above 2.2 per second, he lost too much ground and allowed the winner to come through on his inside. Spazzatura recorded both a longer peak average stride length (7.75m) and a higher peak average stride frequency figure (2.44 per second) than the winner and if he had run in a straight line, he may at least have finished closer to the winner given that there was only a length between them at the line. Shark did record the faster late speed figure, but given that Spazzatura committed for home earlier in the contest, I don’t think that can be used as definitive proof that Shark would have won the race regardless of the direction that the runner-up took when hitting the front.
Spazzatura was certainly slightly unfortunate, but I also think that the 3rd placed El Vigia falls into that category. He had finished ahead of Spazzatura in the G3 Julio Castro Ruiz in February and a look at his data in the closing stages might suggest that he was unlucky not to confirm that form on Saturday. Drawn wide in stall 14, Jorge Gonzalez was forced to deliver his mount with a later challenge and yet El Vigia finished very strongly with a race best run-out speed of 52.96 km/h and faster closing speed than either of the 2 horses that finished ahead of him. He was forced to come wide into the straight, in part because Spazzatura was pushing several runners wide at that point. From a difficult position he made up an exceptional amount of ground and having recorded a peak average stride length of 7.79m, far longer than the 2 horses to finish ahead of him, he was very unfortunate to run out of time and not to be able to play a part in the finish.
I don’t want to detract too much from Julio Orellana’s charge. Shark deserved to win the race and he was given a superb ride to do so. However, in this case the data from TPD might suggest that the connections of the placed horses can at the very least feel confident that under different circumstances they may well be able to reverse the result.