The Guru, Jerry Brown, has reason to be quite satisfied today, seeing that 2
historic bids came to an end yesterday, one in Washington DC and one in Elmont,
NY.
I usually can come up with a snappy quote for a situation, but I can not seem
to here so I will have to use my own words.
Big Brown was anointed as one of Racing\'s greats without having to face
adversity. When adversity presented itself (Heat? A deeper track than BB may
have liked? Desormeaux yanking on the reins early in the race?)BB proved to be
merely mortal and then some.
Will be interested to see if this colt runs again and if so where. I would have
to assume that he will be getting his steroids on the fifteenth of this month
if he is going to stay in training.
Bee,
The track was nice and tight and the weather was the same for all the horses.BB handled the pre-race and warm up with out sweating a bead(little kidney sweat).Something caused that performance and they may or may not find out.BB may be heading to New Bolton Medical.
The winner was the anti everything.Washed out badly going to the gate, slow going into the race, short rest off paired up poorly spaced tops and unable to beat allowance types 21 days ago, eligible for NW1X.He did catch a track which was kind to speed for the most part.
Slowest Belmont in recent years, on a pretty fast surface.The time of 2.29.65 is pathetic and the last 6f in 1.16.4 confirms just how common the 3yr old TC particiapnts were,except for BB and 8 Belles.
Mike
Here\'s an honest question.
How much of a factor are steroids in helping a horse avoid regression? I am sure their use is not totally responsible, but they promote strength and strength would seem to make a difference.
My vet theorizes it takes 4 - 6 weeks use of steroids to have a real effect on a horse.
If Dutrow was being honest about taking BB off steroids following the Derby...5 weeks...was that enough to make the horse\'s regression, which Thorograph definitively predicted, serious to the extent it appeared?
TGJB really did an outstanding job this time on the ROTW if you look at it objectively.
\"Big Brown also has legally been injected with steroids in the past, but, according to Dutrow, he had not had his monthly dose since mid-April, before the Triple Crown began.
Bramlage doubted that Big Brown was affected by not using steroids.
\"It\'s not that kind of situation,\" Bramlage said. \"Anabolic steroids keep them eating and happy and aggressive, which he was all week.\"
miff Wrote:
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> Bee,
>
> The track was nice and tight and the weather was
> the same for all the horses.BB handled the
> pre-race and warm up with out sweating a
> bead(little kidney sweat).Something caused that
> performance and they may or may not find out.BB
> may be heading to New Bolton Medical.
>
> The winner was the anti everything.Washed out
> badly going to the gate, slow going into the race,
> short rest off paired up poorly spaced tops and
> unable to beat allowance types 21 days ago,
> eligible for NW1X.He did catch a track which was
> kind to speed for the most part.
>
> Slowest Belmont in recent years, on a pretty fast
> surface.The time of 2.29.65 is pathetic and the
> last 6f in 1.16.4 confirms just how common the 3yr
> old TC particiapnts were,except for BB and 8
> Belles.
>
>
> Mike
a horrible Belmont. I didn\'t like the Preakness performances either.
as for Da Tara, I hated his line, but he is a well bred colt. his 2nd dam, Kaylem Ho, produced 15 winners, 9 of more than 100k. I got on DoC early because of the same mare (his 3rd). with all the recent attention given to Better Than Honour, it\'s time to recognize Kaylem Ho, one of the truly great broodmares.
Since I am one of the many horseplayers who believe Dutrow (among others) is not a good guy and really bad for the sport, the question no one has asked is why he chose to take the horse off steroids and why he chose to make the announcement. There are several posssibilities that come to mind. 1. He tought the horse (and the trainer) could win without; or 2. there were other (undetectable) miracles of modern science at his disposal. I was perhaps the only attendee yesterday in the Belmont clubhouse yesterday who came out against Big Brown. Kudos to Jerry for nailing this possibility long before yesterday. It would not surprise me if Big Brown never won a grade I again.
Alm,
Dutrow and HONEST in the same sentence ?
Wonder if Bennie the Bull missed his shot ?
If BB didn\'t get juiced since his April 15 appointment; that would be about 7 1/2 weeks.
Top three $ earners:
Curlin
Big Brown
Bennie the Bull
As Miff pointed out both Curlin and Big Brown were fast young colts even when Pat and Helen had them.
Take a look at the PP\'s of St. Liam before he was transfered to the trainer with the deep bedding and mints.....
Drug tests are like locks on a gate; they don\'t keep the crooks out..
Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrong never failed a drug test.
Forget Big Brown. Where were the others? The second slowest of 9 horses going into the race wins. Don\'t bother trying to rationalize this result using sheet methodology. It\'s pedigree.
And if you bet it \"objectively\" it\'s time to take out the trash. Sorry but this time JB can only take credit for choosing the loser and they don\'t offer that bet.
JR
Yeah they did. JB won that supper at Carmines...........
He had the 3 super horses nailed and called out BB a long time ago. IMHO this is one of those situations that can\'t be fully explained by the sheets/jockey/trainer but also that something about a living creature -that unknown quantity that makes the sport so fascinating in the first place.
Given all the information at hand, I think TGJB\'s analysis was brilliant.
girly,
I doubt that JB thinks his Belmont analysis was brilliant.
Ivarone speaks:
\"He said Big Brown's throat was examined with an endoscope, and that no blood or mucus was found. He theorized that Big Brown might not have cared for the loose, deep track on the hot, sweltering afternoon. Iavarone also said Big Brown had a loose shoe rear left.\"
...this guys got some suckers putting up $100 million and does not even know that the track was anything but \"loose, deep.Wonder why I enquired if one could \"short\" this IEAH fund.
Incidentally,since when does BB need a particular type surface to run well.
Mike
I wouldn\'t go as far as brilliant, but overall I thought it was pretty good. Right church, wrong pew.
JB,
I ran 2-3-4-5 in the race and threw Brown out of everything, and I wouldn\'t call my play brilliant. lol
JR,
This isn\'t true. Vegas offered a short Big Brown bet.
Analysis and play are two different things, and I didn\'t say brilliant.
Random events happen all the time in this game. The key part of the analysis was taking a position against BB, and if you and I (and MJ) get to make those plays 100 times, we make an awful lot of money. The problem was we caught one of the random events not attached to the primary analysis-- a joker jumped out of the deck.
The other problem, of course, is you don\'t get 100 shots at 1-5 shots making their third start in 5 weeks off what amounts to an 0-2 (top followed by a backward move), with the top a killer effort.
Even when you\'re right you can be wrong. I was convinced BB\'s feet were killing him , but couldn\'t find Da\'Tara (completely whiffed on that lone speed thing) and ended up 2-3-4-5. I was screwed when Casino Drive scratched because that horse has been lame for 2 weeks.
I heard that Mall like the winner but I don\'t know if he ended up playing him.
This is really the only way I can rationalize what happened yesterday. Take a look at the figures run in their LAST race only (which obviously is a very short-sighted way to use the figures under normal conditions).
Macho Again 2.5
Denis of Cork 2.5
Da\'Tara 3.5
Tale of Ekati 3.0
Anak Nakal 4.0
Ready\'s Echo 2.5
Icabad Crane 3.25
Now give Da\'Tara the lead and the rail the whole way around and throw in the fact that really none of the pedigrees in this race were outwardly screaming for 12 furlongs (as is the case with 99% of north american runners) which might cause a figure improvement if they were... discounting Da\'Tara doesn\'t seem like such a great thing to do under that light. I\'m going to guess DoC and Da\'Tara get somewhat similar figs after DoC being somewhat wide on each turn.
I\'m probably reaching quite a bit here, and should probably just learn to let races like this go, but like many others, I was so ready to cash that super with the horses that finished 2-3-4-5.
Sounds like the guys on this board would have had half the super pool if DT didn\'t run. I had figured I would have made 150-200k on a $1,600 bet, I\'ll have to revise my estimates down.
Well I was clearly wrong about Big Brown. The bigger problem for me yesterday was being wrong in the other races I bet, since I only bet $168 on the Belmont and did not have BB on any of those tickets anyway -- I missed the Da\'Tara bandwagon too, unfortunately.
Good call on BB, Jerry. Every race is a learning experience and I have some good additional data points for the memory bank.
\"Data points\" brings back memories.
The question is, what did we learn from this race? While pulling a joker from the deck might be a random event, there is still a frequency associated with it. For some reason, Da Tara outran not just a 1-4 shot, but a whole group of horses who each had a better reason to run faster than Da Tara and didn\'t. Why?
I wish I\'d known.
If DT had run his race the payouts would have been disappointing. Correctly toss a 1-4 shot and end up with just your hands in your pockets. Big bummer.
JR Wrote:
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> And if you bet it \"objectively\" it\'s time to take
> out the trash. Sorry but this time JB can only
> take credit for choosing the loser and they don\'t
> offer that bet.
Really? The boys at betfair would disagree, and any professional player knows exactly how to do it at the windows.
As I said in another post, bashing a heavy fave to bounce to the moon and picking the winner are two different calculations.
As for how this could happen (a supposedly slow horse) winning at huge odds. It happens often enough. He was coming to the race off a pair up. Always a potential threat. And its Zito, who performs minor miracles in big races.
It not always about the figures, you have to take a more \'cynical\' view at times. I\'m not claiming to have predicted anything, just that the result is WELL within the bounds of normalcy, or what passes for it at the track.
I don\'t consider miracles, even minor ones, within the bounds of normal events.
>Big Brown was anointed as one of Racing\'s greats without having to face
adversity. When adversity presented itself (Heat? A deeper track than BB may
have liked? Desormeaux yanking on the reins early in the race?)BB proved to be
merely mortal and then some.<
Richie,
The problem is that even though he was steadied, a bit rank early, bumped, it was very hot, etc... it\'s not like he finished a close 2nd or 3rd. If he had, there would be questions about the ride, trip, conditions, or his ability to overcome adversity. He would then fall into the category of horses that lost their bid for the Crown because they got a bad trip, moved prematurely etc... However, BB was done after about 6F. He pretty much didn\'t lift a hoof.
I have no idea what R Dutrow really thought about this horse\'s chances going in, but in hindsight I suspect that if he was worried and knew the horse was a bit short, he wasn\'t going to say that publicly if he intended to run. If something bad happened after he said there was still an issue, it would have been a total public relations disaster for him and the sport.
The thing is, high quality horses don\'t run this poorly unless there is something physically wrong with them.
IMHO, pending new information we are going to have to presume that the cracked quarter and missed training leading up to the Belmont was the cause of his poor effort.
This horse has had chronic hoof problems even when he was just in training. That\'s why he was so lightly raced to begin with. We all knew going in the probabilities of a recurrence of that problem were much higher than usual regardless of his performances on the track. The fact that he actually had a cracked hoof and missed some days of training screamed that the risk of a poor effort were much higher than the PPs alone suggested.
I\'ve been about as positive on this horse as anyone here, but I gave him only 50% instead of 75% because of that one factor alone. Plus, I still haven\'t seen anyone provide any stats that suggest I overestimated the risk. If anything, I conceded that I was probably underestimating it out of ignorance.
I am still having a tough time thinking of any top notch horses that missed some training just prior to an important stakes race that went on to win. However, I can think of several that ran sub par. About the closest thing I can think of was Invasor in the BC a couple of years ago. He missed an important prep. However, K.M. had a lot more time to get him right for the BC than Dutrow had to get BB right for the Belmont.
Pending new info, I think that\'s the lesson of the Belmont. Horses that get sick, have minor physical ailments, etc.. that are bad enough to keep them out of training for awhile just prior to a major race, but not bad enough to miss the race are a very huge risk - especially as the favorite.
When all was said and done, I think the Japanese connections came out of this looking really good. They resisted the temptation to run after traveling thousands of miles, attended the race, said some kinds things about BB, and wished BB all the best despite some of the comments hurled their way by Dutrow leading up to the race. Class act!
1) There was nothing miraculous about the d\'tara win. You must be kidding. Lightly raced horse, hall of fame trainer, every possible \'aid\' in a race like this. You must have a low criteria for the word miracle.
2) As much as I respected BB\'s efforts in the Derby and Preakness, there was no way to have \'confidence\' in his winning the Belmont. Too many possible issues, not the least of which was the hoof problem and the need for the Dutrow \'mojo\' to keep working under extreme observation.
I would have liked to see a win, was prepared for a pullup out of the gate. And would not have bet on him with Renmimbi.
There\'s no horseplayer alive aint seen this happen 1000 times.
You must be fresh.
A pair up with short spacing and a slow top. Sounds like a great bet. Glad you had it dad.