Trainer Barclay Tagg had prophetic words of wisdom for jockey Eibar Coa before he sent Eric Fein's Big Truck to the $300,000 Tampa Bay Derby (gr. III).

"I said, 'Ride to be second, and if something happens to War Pass, we win,'" Tagg told reporters just moments after the Hook and Laddercolt wore down Todd Pletcher trainee Atoned in a neck-and-neck battle March 15. "I thought we were the second-best horse."
Tagg, of course, was deferring to Robert LaPenta's unbeaten War Pass, sent off at odds of 1-9 in a field of seven and clearly expected by the on-track crowd of 12,746 to score his sixth consecutive victory in the 1 1/6-mile event. But twisted circumstances put the Nick Zito trainee in a situation he'd never tried before; when a bad break caused the previously unbeaten frontrunner to get pinched back at the start, he never recovered and finished last.

"You saw what happened (at the break)," Zito said. "But he got moving and I thought he was in a good position going down the back, but when (Cornelio Velasquez) asked him, nothing happened. I don't know what happened. I just don't know."

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