I am liking Straight Line at 20-1, in top form with a nice foward moving line, has rail and at 20-1 a must use for me. I can\'t count how many 3yr olds make that final move late in the year, he needs a 1 or 2 pt improvement to win it all.
Good Luck
SL was a real potential sleeper and easily could have move forward a pt or 2 and w/ a rail trip was all the more dangerous . I went back and forth on SL but becouse of the price finally settled on Purge who had back #\'s and a somewhat tough pattern that figured to do 2 things , win the race or run dead last ...
wht not go with the hottest drug trainer at 25 to 1. good choice.
He also had two other horses in the race at long odds. For a total of three. There was also Richard D had a long shot and Bobby F. had a long shot, what you going to bet everyone of those?? In every big race that is run?? You could say that about BC time.
I\'m not going to say this race was easy, because it wasn\'t-- Alan did the analysis and did not hit it, although he did put up a 3 horse box that included the second and third finishers, along with the 50-1 shot that finished fifth. But the big thing was that the public was betting horses (Host, Scrappy T, Imperialism) that had never run fast enough to hit the board. I mean, how often do you get the fastest horse (best top) winning, the second fastest running second, and a $600 exacta? With the next two finishers being among the logical contenders, yielding a 29k super.
What\'s your point ?
Zorro-- the general point is that the Cigar was a great betting race. The specific point is that what sometimes makes a great betting race is not finding a horse to bet, but seeing that the public is playing the wrong horse (or horses, in this case), and working around it. You didn\'t have to love the patterns on Purge or Mass Media to crush this one (although Purge did have a history of running well off layoffs and non-efforts). You just had to look at the board, and see that several they were betting were a lot slower than several they were not betting, and play exotics combining the fast ones.
The Cigar Mile could have been a great ROTW ?
Good point.
Zorro-- no, it could NOT have been a great ROTW-- that\'s the point. There were no strong TG related points to make about patterns, etc., on individual horses-- the situation was too diffuse for that kind of discussion. It was simply an odds play-- faster horses vs. slower, overbet ones.
That isn\'t a \"strong TG related point\" worth making? Seems like it would be strongest of all the TG points.
I threw out Badge of Silver off the layoff.
I thought Scrappy T couldn\'t possibly have a better looking sheet. He ran a 0 in the Preakness early in his 3 year old campaign. Came back off the layoff with a 2 and then improved to a 0. With 7 months passing since his top, I thought a -1 or -2 was very likely given some typical development. He figured to save ground too unlike many fo the faster closers.
Even after the race I still like my bet against Badge of Silver.
I threw out Purge because he\'s been a cripple for most of the last 15 months. That\'s usually enough to keep me off them. I don\'t like betting cripples.
TGJB, please refer to your Overview comments for the last ROTW....I rest my case. It\'s time for ROTW to morph into a paid service. In my humble opinion, there should be a ROTW for beginners and an other for the winning hard core. I know the best when I see it and ROTW is the best thing going.
Any number of Horse\'s could have won + Patterns in the Cigar Mile didn\'t offer value for the ROTW to be used as an educational tool . If I had any say , 2 yo\'s got it the rest of the way in \'05 , understanding the 2 yo line is (most) important for evaluating older Horse\'s as well .
For what it\'s worth, here are the sheets for the Cigar. I don\'t think there was a coherent ROTW \"story line\", but everyone can judge for themselves. I will be doing a ROTW this week, may or may not next week-- might go to Arizona for the industry get together.
Damn mushrooms!...lets\' try this again.
Other forum had a Rule by Reason author that handicapped The Mile, and thee last 3#s he wrote down for Purge were ...11 1/4...9 1/2....4 1/4
T.G. has 1 1/2...0...-4
Somethin ain\'t square....eight points in first two and 10 for the last !...no wonder he paid $50.00.
TGJB:
Thanks for publishing the Cigar numbers. As always, a great learning tool and a great read.
I didn\'t jump into the \"More Importantly\" pool (eliminating negative #s) because I thought it was important that you hear from customers who have been with your product for years, who have watched the \"zero barrier\" being broken, who have watched the ascent into negativity.
Of the 11 entrants in the Cigar, 7 had visited negative territory. The number which follows each of the animals names is the number of negatives run/ the number of races for which a TG was assigned.
Bailero (3/20), Badge of Silver (4/11), Purge (2/14), Mass Media (4/17), GYGISTAR (16/28) (wow), Silver Wagon (4/7),Value Plus (2/13). Total 35/110.
Gygistar. Wow. 28 TG #s assigned, 16 negative efforts. And this is a gelding who will probably be best remembered for his back to back wins in the Westchester H. Not a criticism, just an observation.
I think your voice needs to be heard in Arizona more than we need a ROTW. How strong was the \"under(card)tow\" at AQ Saturday?
Richie-- at a quick look I saw 3 negatives for Purge, only 2 for Bailero, but not sure what the relevence is. Also, what undertow?
If I go to Arizona, it won\'t be to speak. After the stress of Vegas last year, there ain\'t enough antacid on the planet.
In case it wasn\'t clear, the Cigar figures David quoted were TG vs. Ragozin, reading backwards (most recent first).
TGJB:
Undertow was a poor play on words with \"undercard\". On this board I have seen numerous references to watching how certain \"move up trainer\'s\" animals performed in the early part of the card. I guess the implication is that there is some sort of pharmaceutical bias on a particular day.
Was there a point in my observation, or relevance? Just that horses who are good, but not great, are running negative numbers frequently. I prefaced my remark by saying that I didn\'t have the greatest perspective in that I have been using the TGs for only a little more than a year, and that others with a longer history of use might better comment on negativity.
IMO, horses at the top levels will continue to run faster on performance figure scales because they will be relatively lightly raced compared to horses of previous years. Brilliant speed, not durability, seems to make for a desirable stallion these days.
Hypothetical ? Lets say that the average number of starts for every runner in the US is in the range of 8 - 9 starts per year. Do you think there would be a shift on the performance scale (would horses in general get \"faster\"?) if 8-9 starts became 6-7 starts?
In re Arizona, you don\'t have to speak at a podium for your voice to be heard-- and bring your golf clubs.
Rich,
Interesting theory, that since just a few brilliant performances are what trainers are going for, there could be a correlation between fewer starts and higher figures. My first reaction was that a more likely explanation would be the use of drugs, but I can see that the two explanations are not incompatible. Since drugs, especially analgesics, can cause a horse to run through its limitations of pain and injury, they have to spend more time on the shelf to recuperate, or retire due to injury. The harder you squeeze the lemon, the sooner you run out of juice.
Bob
Guys-- why does it have to be just one thing? As I said in \"Are Racehorses Getting Faster\" (archive section), there are a lot of things going on.
Just keep in mind when you are looking at this that harness horses have gotten a WHOLE lot faster over the last 25 years. As I showed in that piece, they cut their times by over 3% from 1980 to 2003-- comparable improvement for thoroughbreds would be about 11 TG points over the same period, or about twice what I have them improving.
I would have thought it would have been an even more significant improvement than that. It used to be 2:00 mile on a half mile track and now even cheap horses run 1:58 and average ones 1:55 and Good ones 1:52 (on a half). At the Big M the track record used to be 1:54 now its at 1:47.
As an old Betting cronie used to say \"It\'s in the Blood....\"
NC Tony
I know this has been mentioned, but some of the improvement in harness horses has to do with the equipment, which I don\'t believe is possible with T-breds. I\'m not saying all, but certainly a decent percentage.
Beyerguy-- If you are talking about the modified sulky, that came in the mid to late 70s.
the standard-bred is a much newer breed. it probably has had more room for improvement due to selective breeding in recent decades.
http://www.mrmike.com/explore/hrhist.htm
Yes, the sulky, but it keeps improving. Also, artificial insemination has to help as well.