It's official: Arrogate broke track record in Pegasus World Cup

It is now official: Arrogate broke the track record at Gulfstream Park last weekend in the Pegasus World Cup.

The official winning time for the first running of the world's richest race has been lowered by nearly four-fifths of a second after several noted stopwatch experts queried the original mark.

As a result, Arrogate's official time of the race is now 1m46.83s, a new track record at Gulfstream Park, which is notorious for producing inaccurate timings. The new mark betters the old record of 1m46.86s set by Lea in the 2014 Donn Handicap.

Race times are considered much more significant in US racing than they are in Europe, and the 'chart' for Arrogate's performance was changed to make the colt's time 0.78s faster than the 1m47.61s that had been published on Saturday night after the $12 million contest.

According to the Daily Racing Form, Gulfstream Park officials had asked Trakus to perform an "exhaustive analysis" of the official time of the Pegasus after several prominent speed-figure producers chose to amend their figures for the race, believing the official time to have been dubious. Arrogate's Beyer speed figure for the race, for example, was upgraded to 119 from 116.

In related news, trainer Bob Baffert appears to be warming to the idea of sending the world's top-rated racehorse to Meydan for the Dubai World Cup.

Arrogate's connections seemed lukewarm to the prospect after Saturday's race but Baffert told the Daily Racing Form the horse had come out of the Pegasus so well that Meydan is a possibility.

"It wasn't hard on him," said the trainer. "We’re in a holding [pattern]. I'll wait a couple of weeks and sit down."