Prat showed everyone how to win on the sloppy Saratoga surface today. I wonder how many jockeys will be bold enough to try dropping out 20 lengths last. No excuses for Hill Road, Heart of Honor or Soverignity.
Went from a great card to almost not worth wagering on. Only daily doubles on all the stakes races, all multi race wagers canceled. Goodbye to the handle.
Couldn\'t they just move the wagers so pick 3/4/5/6 were available to bet?
The Wonder Again should of been canceled. Guaranteed a graded stakes placing.
With 2 Casse runners. It gets downgraded to a G3 automatically, and when they graded stakes committee reviews it, it should be a listed stakes.
Rodriguez / Sovereignty exacta box for me , depending on the probable payouts.
This weekend is gonna be a figure making nightmare.
lots of X\'s
not to mention the fast dry now , GOOD and harrowed for the 11th
Nightmare might be an understatement. Just thinking about it give me anxiety.
Paul Matties twitter post today: \"It was nobody\'s fault but the track at Saratoga was different for every race on Saturday. Regardless of the maker, all figures from that card will be made up. And probably, wrong.\"
Obviously Paul didn’t read Ragozin’s book, where he said tracks don’t change speeds.
There were four mile races out of the chute. Three were off the grass. Three had fields of four or less, even before you get to the high number of Xs you get with rough conditions, and grass horses on dirt in general. So very few data points to work with.
Yeah, no problem. I’m marking a few races to review after the horses come back.
I spoke with Paul briefly in the backyard on Thursday or Friday. I hope he doesn\'t mind me sharing some of our conversation.
We discussed if the game was beatable and we both agreed it is still beatable. However, the margins are far less obviously which lead to him saying these things I agreed with about the state of the game.
He said it isn\'t as much fun as it used to be. 20 years ago, you could study the night before, narrow the field to 3 horses let\'s say and have a very solid but not 100% detailed idea of where you might go and then at 20 minutes to post zero in on your exact play looking at the board, making final decisions, and swing at the races. But today, you need to have that 100% detailed idea the night before based on possible track conditions, how it might be playing, where the CAW has zeroed in, and then at 20 minutes to post you are looking at the will pays to decide if you can even play the race based on what the best guess at anticipated odds will be from a few sources. After all of that. Often, the best decision is to PASS the race today.
Which lead to him explaining something I hadn\'t considered but realized, Yes, he\'s on it. You can\'t get into a rhythm of race to race to race with your bets when your decision is so heavily involved with whether to pass or not. 20 years ago, there was another race with enough juice in it that if you missed, no big deal but now you have to be so freaking perfect with your decisions race to race, day to day and it takes a lot out of you for that grind.
We discussed a few other things. Hopefully I haven\'t butchered his/our thoughts and again, hope he doesn\'t mind me sharing (I don\'t think so at all). Obviously it is fun to win and beat the game but it is to no one\'s surprise much more difficult esp when not putting in a play is the right one more than ever.
Of course, he\'s right , and anyone who played a decent winning game decades ago is fully aware of this .
Game will always be beatable, the question is , how often and for how much. That number has dwindled on both counts.
fwiw, that goodthing shipper from OP ... CAW or layoff money or the combo, your winning exacta ? 70 to 21 at the bell. If you had that , you were not happy. Trifecta, also came back pretty light considering.
The Met Mile had a slow final time for a Grade 1 on dirt. Someone on this board mentioned that the Beyer came back low and was revised from a 98 Beyer to an 106 Beyer, or something close to that, forgive me for not looking it up.
The last quarter for Fierceness was almost 26 flat. Was the track that slow?
Is Raging Torrent the only one who will pair up in that race?
The 98 Beyer sounds more realistic for the fractions and final time except for being a Grade 1.
Doesn\'t it stand to reason the off track would slow the race time down?
The Met was indeed a pain in the butt, pretty much a coin toss. I went conservative but it definitely could be faster. It doesn’t really matter for anyone other than the winnerâ€" everyone else gets an off race in the slop, it’s just a question of how bad. I paired the winner, alternative was to break out the race from mile races on either side and give him a new top.
We will post the whole day later this week in ROTW. There are some interesting figures. This is the best 3yo crop in a long timeâ€" there at least another 2-3 top ones who didn’t run over the weekend.
will be interested in Journalism # as he went almost 3-4 wide then maybe 4-5 wide!
Don\'t know how accurate the GPS data from Equibase is, but they have Journalism traveling 28 feet further than Sovereignty, and traveling the furthest out of all the runners.
That should get him the best fig in the race.