Tiznow, Point Given Make for One Tough Decision

When Tiznow won last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic and later was voted horse of the year, he was the first horse to nail down those two prizes since Cigar five years before.

Now Tiznow, after a fragmented 4-year-old season, has won another Classic and is once more a leading horse-of-the-year candidate, but he and Point Given have left the 200 Eclipse Awards voters with a difficult decision when they cast their ballots in late December. Point Given was nearly perfect this year, winning all his starts except the Kentucky Derby, but his early retirement, due to a tendon injury, forced him to miss the Breeders’ Cup. Only once in the last six years--when Charismatic was voted the title in 1999--has a horse-of-the-year winner failed to run in the Breeders’ Cup.

“The only thing about Point Given is that he never beat older horses,” said Jay Robbins, who trains Tiznow. “I think my horse is awfully deserving.”

Bob Baffert, who trained Point Given, feels that there were several “horses of the month,” including Tiznow. Others who had flashes of brilliance, according to Baffert were Aptitude and Baffert’s own Captain Steve, who was retired before the Breeders’ Cup.

Out of seven starts, Point Given had six wins overall and five Grade I’s, including the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes after his puzzling fifth-place finish in the Derby. His last race was a win in the Travers at Saratoga on Aug. 25.

To start the year, Tiznow sandwiched wins in the San Fernando and the Santa Anita Handicap around a second-place finish to Wooden Phone in the Strub. He was on the shelf for six months with a back injury, then ran third twice against the best older horses, in the Woodward at Belmont Park and the Goodwood Handicap at Santa Anita. He may make his grass debut in the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup on Dec. 1, although Robbins said that if he shows fatigue like he did after last year’s Classic, he might not run again until next year.

The last back-to-back horse of the year was Cigar, who won in 1995-96. Before him, there hadn’t been consecutive horse-of-the-year titles since Affirmed in 1978-79. John Henry won two titles in the early 1980s, but they weren’t in succession.

Baffert went into the eight Breeders’ Cup races with a chance to clinch three titles, and now all of them are precarious. Besides Point Given’s battle at the ballot box with Tiznow, Baffert’s Officer may have lost the 2-year-old male title with a fifth-place finish in the Juvenile, and his Habibti lost out on the 2-year-old filly championship with a seventh-place finish in the Juvenile Fillies. Officer and Habibti were both undefeated before Saturday.

Baffert said that Officer would make one more start this year, in the Hollywood Futurity on Dec. 16.

Exogenous’ racing career is over after she was seriously injured and scratched just before the post parade of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. The 3-year-old filly reared and flipped over, suffering a severe condition. A track veterinarian recommended that she be euthanized, but trainer Scotty Schulhofer’s vet, Steve Carr, suggested that she be sent back to the barn for treatment.

Schulhofer said Sunday that if Exogenous, who had won five of 12 starts and earned $945,560, continues to do well in the next 48 hours, she should survive.