i try to post as honest as i can. i am a fan of both products. but i believe jerry must be honest and say that rags was right big-time on 3 horses.
1- borrego
2- steviewonderboy
3-shakespear
rags had borrego much slower than jerry
rags had stevie much faster
rags had shakespear much slower
on breeders cup day these were key bets or bet against.
my belief is that both groups need to stop the gossip and backbiting and act like professionals and improve their product. look merrill lynch & american express don\'t like all the same stocks but they don\'t carry-on like this.
Maybe you can make an argument for the dirt races, certainly the Stevie figures, but Shakespeare is not a good example. He went on soft turf for the first time and Mott feared the worst as he\'s out of Theatrical. That was a non-effort because of turf condition and cannot be used to (un)validate prior figs.
High Roller, I disagree. Borrego was a bet against for me on TG, I was expecting a bounce off of 2 efforts in races where the speed collapsed. Horses get brave when they reach the front and a bunch of the rest are stopping. Borrego faced a much different scenario in the BC and you have to consider other things besides the numbers. Stevie was a well regarded, talented horse who had trained brilliantly and was being pointed for this race, he hadn\'t made a big move yet into dangerous territory, and remember 2yo\'s can grow and develop when they are not racing:he was a definite \"use\" on TG.
shake had a 2 something right?? that was fast for that race right??
I guess everybody \"scorecards\" differently, but I would give you 2 out of 3, not all three.
The best example is StevieWonderboy. He definitely looked better on the Rags sheet, even Jerry posted that in an earlier thread.
Shakespeare did look better on Rags, but as mentioned by another poster, the son of Theatrical on soft turf angle was discussed by the trainer BEFORE the race, not as an excuse afterwards. It also looks like the race that English Channel ran in defeat in the Breeders Cup fits with his prevous race against Shakespeare. However, you can\'t argue that Shakespeare off of paired 0\'s, did look better on T-Graph. But, if you remember, many horses were very close to each other in that race and in the Seminar Jerry recommended using the price horses, not Shakespeare, in the race.
As I posted 1 month BEFORE the Breeders Cup (and Jerry agreed with it), the race by Borrego in the Breeders Cup was not going to prove anything. No matter whose sheet you looked at, you had to bet AGAINST him. Not for the pace stuff mentioned by Josephus, but because if he did run a negative 3 3/4, it was almost a four point forward move and he was almost surely to bounce. If he ran as slow as Rags thought he did, then you viewed him as a non-contender to begin with. So, him running bad meant nothing. I was at the BC with a Rags user and the one thing we agreed MOST on all day was betting against Borrego, albeit for different reasons.
There are other examples on BC day where the Rags figures were suspect or bad.
Lost in the Fog was a faster horse on Rags than on Tgraph.
Artie Schiller looked better on Thorograph.
Pleasant Home, especially at 30-1, looked better on Thorograph.
Flower Alley looked better on Thorograph.
Kev,
I didn\'t address Shake because spook-express had already done so, and I agree with him. To me, Shake was a bet against for those reasons.
suave and SK pretty much ran to their odds in the BC. FA slightly outperformed, and borrego underperformed. i don\'t think you got much of an edge using either side\'s JCGC #. i don\'t think you could say TG blew the shakespeare #. ace outperformed, and english channel ran as well as any US based horse. you were more likely to bet stevie if you used the other guy.... just one guy\'s opinion.
See I didnt like LITF off the rag\'s number, had a hard time on TG and Arite I loved on both. F.Alley had about the same looking line on both two big races and then a bad race in his last.
I didnt like shake on both, but he really looked like a bounce horse on TG, pairing up big number\'s like that.
See ask 10 people and get 10 different answers.
Briefly-- it is important to remember that the horses in question-- Shakespeare and Borrego-- were not the only horses to come back from the disputed-figure races. Flower Alley, Suave, and Sun King came out of the Gold Cup, and Ace and English Channel came out of the Shakespeare race, and all ran well in figure terms. As you will see, they will all move WAY forward on Ragozin.
Tough to see how someone can hold the Classic results against us. In the analysis we said to throw out Borrego, key Super Frolic and the Canadian by playing them to win and under only Saint Liam and Flower Alley in exactas and tris, extra under the former. We came within a neck of hitting a tri with 70-1 and 10-1 shots in it, using only 4 horses.