Premio El Ensayo Mega (G1) 2025
A winning time of 2:27.92 ranks this year’s renewal of the race 8th in the last decade and the overall time was 4.36s slower than the time of Il Campione in 2014, who holds the record time in this race since the turn of the century. We can perhaps surmise that the winning time would prove contradictory to the visual impression created from the replay that this race was run at a rapid pace. That pace was set by Kiasora (2nd) who showed bright early speed from the moment that the gates opened, reaching 30 mph in 4.6s and the fastest opening furlongs in the field. As much as 2s ahead of the eventual winner with half a mile to run, a case can certainly be made that Kiasora did too much in the early stages under Javier Guajardo. However, despite the fact that both the winner and the 3rd placed horse have closed on her in the final quarter of a mile, Kiasora’s final furlong time of 12.19s still ranked 3rd and her run-out speed, measured 2s after she crossed the winning line, was a race best figure of 35.72 mph. That figure, coupled with the fact that she maintained a stride frequency average of 2.31 per second over the final half a mile, above her overall race average of 2.29 per second, would lead to the conclusion that she idled in front and as such, may have handed this race to the runner-up. It would be a slightly harsh assessment of an excellent front-running performance, but the data from TPD does point us in that direction.
I have opened this review by looking at the performance of the runner-up because her efforts in front have helped to set this race top, but that shouldn’t detract from the performance of the winner, who has made up a lot of ground in the straight to get his head in front when it mattered. At 43.20 mph, he had the highest top speed figure in the field and was the fastest horse on the clock for each of the final 3 furlong splits. There was no fluke about this performance and it is particularly noticeable that the variance in his stride length, which reached a race peak of 25.56 ft compared to a race average of 23.40 ft, an increase of 9.2%, allowed him to make up so much ground. That long stride, which at its peak was 1.35 ft longer than the runner-up’s, reached its peak in the 10th furlong as he was asked to close by Óscar Ulloa and close he did, making up 2.07s on his rival over the final 600m. Kiasora has idled and the fact that her 10th furlong ranked 10th of the 11 runners, possibly as her rider was trying to conserve energy for the finish, has cost her momentum. However, that should detract from the fact that Created was travelling at a much faster speed, with a higher stride frequency and a longer stride, which means that the data would suggest that the right horse won the race.
When previewing this race last week, I highlighted the fact that Eccentric (3rd) had been a slightly fortunate winner of the Gran Premio Nacional Ricardo Lyon in early October. That may have been a little harsh, but she was certainly well placed to run well that day. She received a very similar ride on Friday evening, actually exceeding her top speed figure from her previous start, reaching a peak of 41.74 mph (ranked 4th). However, her average stride length was far shorter this time (23.51 ft compared to 23.95 ft) and she has simply been beaten by a faster finishing horse that stays very well. Created had recorded a better run-out speed than Eccentric in the Gran Premio Nacional and certainly wasn’t reversing this form out of turn. Eccentric lost very little in defeat and the front 3 were 0.7s or four and a quarter lengths clear of the rest. However, the Premio El Ensayo Mega in 2025 will be remembered for the superb performance of the winner Created, and rightly so.