Fellas....the hard boots change the surface to control the outcome.How did they beat Afleet Alex?????? Watch the first races and be careful.......
The jock gets off Bernardini and says,\"The track is a little funny!\"
I read all the Equibase charts ... never have I seen so many \"bobbled at the starts\". Take a look. Be interested if anyone else hears anything concrete about the jocks impressions of the track - speed and preferred path aside.
spa Wrote:
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> The jock gets off Bernardini and says,\"The track
> is a little funny!\"
I never noticed an inside bias during the card. Have heard now some suspect there was one. To my eye the reason the favorite backers are implying inside bias is the way Street Sense motored up the rail and left his field gasping. There were plenty of winning and competitive moves off the rail. Generally a biased rail at Churchill involves a dead rail, not a live one.
It will be interesting to see what TGraph concludes.
As far as Castellano commenting the \"Track was a little funny\" he said the very same thing after losing efforts upon Bellamy Road in both the 2005 Kentucky Derby and Travers.
It wasn\'t the track that got Bernardini beat, it was that he finally had to face a legitimate older horse not sitting upon a regression. Its a good thing for Bernardini America doesn\'t really race at the Classic distance. He wouldn\'t have hit the board.
Who would have thought going in that Bernardini could not finish his last quarter in 25.2 off that average pace. If you look at the splits of the Fillies and Juvie colts you will see that they roared home the last part compared to the last two dirt races where the horses crawled home.
When JB does the figs I believe he may find the track slowed for the distaff and the classic,the raw times for those events do not fit with the rest of the day.
Mike
From Bloodhorse:
\"The races were run over a main track that will undoubtedly receive ample criticism in upcoming days, and not only for the injuries suffered by Pine Island and Fleet Indian in the Distaff. The rail was clearly the place to be for most of the day, and affected the races to such a degree that the first four races on the dirt were won by horses who stayed on the rail the whole way.
It could even be argued that the early results affected the pace of the Classic. Brother Derek, starting from the rail, set off at a hot pace, with Lawyer Ron and Lava Man in close pursuit. Invasor and Bernardini came around horses, making an impact through a final half-mile that was run in more than 51 seconds\"
And folks worry about lack of speed on synthetic track surfaces
miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> From Bloodhorse:
>
>
> \"The races were run over a main track that will
> undoubtedly receive ample criticism in upcoming
> days, and not only for the injuries suffered by
> Pine Island and Fleet Indian in the Distaff. The
> rail was clearly the place to be for most of the
> day, and affected the races to such a degree that
> the first four races on the dirt were won by
> horses who stayed on the rail the whole way.
>
> It could even be argued that the early results
> affected the pace of the Classic. Brother Derek,
> starting from the rail, set off at a hot pace,
> with Lawyer Ron and Lava Man in close pursuit.
> Invasor and Bernardini came around horses, making
> an impact through a final half-mile that was run
> in more than 51 seconds\"
>
Haven\'t read the Bloodhorse article but the only writer there that merits respect is Steve Haskin. If he didn\'t write the article its worth the amount of cyberspace it\'s taken up.
1st Race Maryfield from 2 wide wins as essentially one of the favorites.
2nd Race Its No Joke, the Hawthorne Gold Cup winner if I\'m not mistaken, wins from inside as the 2nd choice behind a vastly overrated and overbet Magna Graduate. The game second place horse was wide at 20-1 and nearly got it done.
3rd Race Favorite Dreaming of Anna was off the rail early tucked down near it and still won. Octave did appear to come up the rail. The third horse that made it pay was wide.
4th Race Secret Sense did come up the rail and left those pretenders pretending.
Theres absolutely no reason to believe the dirt track was biased. Theres a lot of sour grapes this morning over some of the favorites getting beat. The simple truth is those favorites were not good enough. If they think they were robbed, let them come back and prove the great injustice done Saturday.
Bro Derek ran a nice race. If it was a 9 pole race it would have been a lot nicer. Bernardini ran a pretty nice 9 pole race too. Its too bad for them the race was longer than that.
Chuckles...You\'ve been around too long to not see the problem with the racing surface. Those comments from me were before the races. All us Kool-Aid drinkers had a big day. So,no sour grapes here. Check the running line for P. Tap in the last race....for a time he lost his action,behind. When he gets back on \"THE PATH\" he almost wins the damn race.........
spa Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Chuckles...You\'ve been around too long to not see
> the problem with the racing surface. Those
> comments from me were before the races. All us
> Kool-Aid drinkers had a big day. So,no sour grapes
> here. Check the running line for P. Tap in the
> last race....for a time he lost his action,behind.
> When he gets back on \"THE PATH\" he almost wins the
> damn race.........
Spa, I\'m not saying the track wasn\'t a little loose or sandy. Heck, at this time of year it generally is. If you were looking for the Derby Day dragster treatment, I\'ll agree it wasn\'t there. That said, it played well to near pace horses, but near pace horses always have that edge. However, my objection is to the notion that the inside was golden, thats all.
I agree with you that Premium Tap got a little squirrely early. He got his feet under him though. I thought Invasor won easily with his ears pricked, but maybe Tap could have made a closer finish of it. Tap is a good horse and at the price was a must use in that race. If you scored the Classic exotics, how can you say the track was bad? That track was as fair as George Bush is crooked.
Aussie says rail scraped and Classic too late.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20706997-2722,00.html
asfufh Wrote:
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> Aussie says rail scraped and Classic too late.
>
Interesting asfufh. Names are not named but my first inclination would be to ask \"How is loose dirt or cushion added to the rail going to speed up the rail?\" I\'d think more cushion would slow it down. If they pushed dirt to the rail the day after that would be a different story.
(That article is one of the worst written articles I\'ve read recently. It may be the Aussie writer used a \"flashback\" technique. It could also be all the scraping was the day after. I\'m really not sure with how poorly its written and the lack of corroborating names.}
My take on it is that Commonwealthers are sensitive. They are second rate Race Callers and second rate dirt horsemen too.
The track was fair. Jerry thought so at first blush and thats good enough for me. The results don\'t indicate an unfair track. Sounds like Jerry cashed Street Sense, Thor and Invasor.....Those were not freak winners.
Esteemed members of the forum:
This is my maiden post - expect a slow break, and a little confusion early as I get bounced around...I\'ll try to make a decent run up the lane, and put forth a steady improving pattern as the campaign progresses. I\'ll need to, given the salty running company.
The biggest standout on the day was the Juvenile winner. Not that he wasn\'t live going in, but that performance was Bellamy Road-esque. The Beyer clones gave him a 108. I can only imagine what he gets here, lack of ground loss notwithstanding. What two year old puts up a performance like that without a little help?
Local horse, local jock, local trainer - a little insurance policy from the maintenance crew.
Stay down, Calvin, and you will reach the promised land. The discrepancy diminished soon after.
\"...the biggest surprise of the 2007 Kentucky Derby post position draw was the decision by the connections of Street Sense, who had the fourth post choice overall, to go into gate #1, a post typically avoided like the plague in recent Derbies. \"The rail was good to us last year, so we decided to go back and try it again. Hopefully we\'ll get a ground-saving trip and get lucky one more time.\" Street Sense, who has been competitive in his three starts this year including a better than looked fourth in the Blue Grass last out, has yet to match the impressive 108 Beyer speed figure he earned in last year\'s BC Juvenile...\"
Sorry, no direct accusations intended, just a little fun!
CTC,
Stay off the grog(aussie term for booze)when posting.The Aussie guy stated that they scraped dirt from the rail position and spread it ELSEWHERE.That should have made the rail/inside tighter than the other paths, no?
If someone had to draw a conclusion after watching the entire card, I\'m sure they would think that the inside was the place to be.Not talking about saving ground but which paths seemed tighter.
Bordanaro(my biggest play because I felt the inside was good) was very disappointing but Bro Derek stayed well after cutting it all the way and was not run away from by Bernardini, wide circle move,(watch the replay)
Street Sense, Dreaming of Anna,Octave,Round Pound,Thors Echo and the winners of the first and second races on that card were all inside.If not a giant rail then surely a somewhat biased inside.Sure a few runners \"sucked up\" outside runnning over tiring runners,except Invasor, Bern.
Mike
Here\'s Beyer:
Invasor 116
Thors\' Echo 116
Red Rocks 111
Misque App 109
Street Sense 108
Ouija Board 108
Round Pound 100
Dreaming of Anna 90
Naturally, it makes little sense to me that the pedestrian distaff in 1.50+ was rated 100 but the pedestrian classic 2.02+ was rated 116. With the weight and ground loss of Invasor TG would have to give the winner app neg 6 to agree, unimaginable.
JB, since you do this stuff, can you tell if Beyer split the variant.
Mike
Miff-- we\'re waiting to get ground from a second guy, so I haven\'t looked at the day yet. After I do it we\'ll post it, and I\'ll comment on the rail, possible split variants, etc. Again, the right way to figure out whether the rail was faster (as opposed to just the shortest way home) is to look at what figures all the horses that ran on it got compared to what they usually run, not where they finished.
The Winning Numbers on the BC races on Dirt were as follows:
1-1-1-1-11. Funny to think this, but the old Keeneland was resurected at Churchill BC Day.
NC Tony
Art Sherman,\"There was such an inside bias that it was unbelievable!\"
So how come I didn\'t cash on Bro Derek? BS!!!!!! The fastest horses ran 1-2.
Good read on Bro Derek, miff.