Does anynody know what she mumbled just as Super Saver was being loaded. Something about him being wet or looking like he lost weight.
Battaglia was raving about how good the horse looked in the saddling area and from a TV appearance he did look good.
For those who say SS bounced I guess he did but do not blame it on pace. The 2nd and 4th palce runners were there the whole way and hung in.
Anyway no excuses from me.
Congrats to Baffert. I really like this guy I see now and there could not a better nor more memorably visible personality for the sport.
they asked Donna \"how the horses looked going into the gate.\" Her two comments were that Dublin (I believe) was a little wet and that Super Saver had lost weight since the Derby.
She said \"Super Saver looks a little drawn\"
Certainly would have been nice to know prior instead of all these Haskin-esque \"he looks better than ever\" comments.
One could use the pace or two weeks as an excuse here, but I\'m not sure I will. If SS had been sluggish early on, that would have been a sign that something was wrong. SS ran just fine for the opening mile. The problem came when he was challenged by two solid horses after running an honest mile.
SS looks like a \'1\' or \'2\' type that is going to have trouble when not getting a dream trip or when facing top company. I was hoping for better.
LAL didn\'t really look that great either. Beating JB 3/4 and YT a length and 3/4 isn\'t good enough in the bigger picture. He was wide, sure, but he\'s either gonna be wide or get checked out of the race, so you really can\'t give him that ground credit.
Could be wrong though. Pletcher is famous for triple crown flops that come back and run well in August, and LAL was coming off a brutal Ky Derby. A return to more reasonable race schedules might be the difference, but the first two legs of the triple crown were not great races.
DRF had 8,000 reporters at Pimlico and NOBODY noticed SS was a little drawn?? WTF!!
Only Donna B as the horses are seconds away from being sprung do we get a \"I\'m not so sure\" opinion AFTER all bets are in.
MikeD I agree. SS ran way too bad. Maybe the worst a Derby winner has run in a long time at Pimlico. And this coming off a small forward condition move. He won the Derby fair and square with a good draw at a track he likes on a wet surface he likes. But yesterday he looked like the horse who was 4th at Tampa.
I was thinking the same thing. Did a Lexis-Nexis search after the race and did not find one comment during Preakness week regarding SS not holding his weight. I\'m normally not a black helicopter guy, but with the entire racing world having decended on Pimlico looking for an angle, it is hard to believe that such an important observation was missed by everyone except Barton.
Sometimes I wonder if these guys when on the road are not texting these Blogs and Reports from Rachels or Scores.
We are observing Lookin at Lucky and Ywanna Twist and we seeing a glowing in the flesh or perfectly sculpted specimen.
I had heard second-hand hours before the race that SS had lost over 100lbs. I had made my bets keying the horse underneath but not that far underneath. Frankly, I didn\'t know what to do with the info.
Leamas.
I caught that comment real time, and wondered how she knew that. From memory? Notes ? That\'s a pretty good memory if that\'s what it was.
SS Made a decent appearance in the pp ,but something like weight would be a relative thing and has to be compared to what you saw previously.
There was talk for a long time about reporting weight here(I think they do it in Hong Kong).
Barton is a horsewoman. The word still has meaning.
Not sure what that means but if she is talking nonsense somebody needs to sit her down and make some sense of this.
Only 15 minutes before Mike Battaglia was nearly wetting his pants over how great SS looked and how obvious it was the moment he step from the plane he knew he was the Boss of Pimlico. Now all of this SCREAMS top effort and yet the horse ran the worst race of his career. And before we bring up 3rd race in 5 weeks tell that to Afleet Alex.
And let me remind you this the last thing the betting public and the viewing public heard before someone said \"And Their Off\".
The Derby Winner and Betting Favorite Looks like he has lost weight since the Derby.
Look I only bet half of what I wanted so I only lost half of what I could. Learning that this horse had been knocked out or spent by the Derby concerns me when I had not heard it anywhere else.
Maybe she needs to explain herself and somebody needs to explain why SS ran so bad. And don\'t give me a shoe or the throat surgery is next baloney. This was the WORST I have seen a Derby winner run in maybe ever and the only person now who looks like she knew something was Donna Barton......
The horse bounced. Or it\'s possible that he didn\'t like the Pimlico strip.
In my opinion, it\'s also entirely possible that SS doesn\'t want to run a classic distance but happens to love Churchill, got a dream trip over a sloppy track that he relished, and was very, very lucky to win a very slow derby.
With any luck we\'ll find out the truth in late summer/fall. As of right now I plan to play heavily against this horse at any distance over 1 1/8th unless he\'s at Churchill or the track comes up wet.
weve had very nice horses dating back to 2003 who were able to run negative 1s thru negative 4s and still bounce, or forge and win these big races coming from derby to preakness day. They were freak horses who were running against mostly average higher level horses. If eske was in perfect shape for these races i could pretty much guarantee we wouldve seen a similar situation again.. seems to be at least one horse a year to do that.
This year we did not have that. Super Saver is a much slower horse that ran 2 top efforts back to back with the last one being a new one and only had 14 days off to recover.. it was clearly a bounce. If he ran a negative 4 like RA did last year and bounced 4 points he wouldve been right in the mix. Hes just not THAT kind of horse though.
MJellish,
Why not have Remy make the Derby winner a quit number to the Preakness 1/16 pole so we\'ll know what kind of effort he put in before the subtracted distance did him in?
I believe Barton \'called it the way she saw it \' - and called it right imo . Personally speaking , I really can\'t imagine anyone was impressed the very least with Super Savers visual appearance on race day in the Saddling area or when Loaded into the Gate ..
Exactly. I agree, and I was watching the NBC feed.
Horses are living things. One can hire clockers, and purchase reams of objectified product classifying performances, but those with an eye for a horse will still have a significant advantage.
Silver Charm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not sure what that means but if she is talking
> nonsense somebody needs to sit her down and make
> some sense of this.
>
> Only 15 minutes before Mike Battagliawas nearly
> wetting his pants over how great SS looked and how
> obvious it was the moment he step from the plane
> he knew he was the Boss of Pimlico. Now all of
> this SCREAMS top effort and yet the h
>
> Maybe she needs to explain herself and somebody
> needs to explain why SS ran so bad. And don\'t give
> me a shoe or the throat surgery is next baloney.
> This was the WORST I have seen a Derby winner run
> in maybe ever and the only person now who looks
> like she knew something was Donna Barton......
2 things:
Donna Barton is an accomplished horsewoman and clearly knows what she is talking about.
You listened to Mike Battaglia. The worst track announcer of all time, and a nauseating presence on television. I wouldn\'t pay any attention to anything this guy has to say. As if anybody needs any more evidence of this, his hyping of SS is yet another example of how clueless he is.
Last thing, who\'s responsibility is it to inform you that SS lost weight or doesn\'t look as good as he did in Kentucky?? Not starting anything with you, but are you blaming the television coverage for not mentioning it sooner?? DRF workout guys?? Just wondering..
Who do you think is the worst and best track announcer?
I think worst has to be the guy at Charles Town. He fumbles for the names in every single race. I like the new Churchill guy.
Agree on Battaglia...my bad.
Regarding the other pre-race comments regardless of who the source is why print or speak them if they are inaccurate. Because they were all the same and we do tend to trust these people to be our eyes and ears if we are not there ourselves.
I\'ve tinkered with something like this before, and the results were very unreliable.
I think it\'s pretty clear that SS bounced. The problem is he really shouldn\'t have. He didn\'t make that big of a move forward in the derby. So the question is, why did he bounce? Was it the two weeks? Was it the trip or the pace? Did he not handle the strip?
IMO, the early pace was fair in the Preakness but not so quick that it should have done him in. Both FD and JB managed to stay on. He really didn\'t run any faster than he did in the Derby when you adjust for the track speed. He had a decent trip. You can make the argument that he didn\'t like PIM, but I think that is a difficult thing to day. He seemed to travel fine. If it\'s true that he lost weight and didn\'t look very good, then I think clearly the two weeks and the effort in the derby and possibly his work between races had a lot to do with it.
I\'m still of the opinion that in any case, this is not a horse that really wants to go a classic distance, and I look forward to betting against him if he attempts to go that far in the future. I think he\'s good enough to hang on for a piece depending upon the quality of the field he races, but that\'s about it.
Considering I liked JB and FD to hit the exotics, I sort of feel like a missed an opportunity here. But I just didn\'t like the race to begin with and bet very, very small. I think the filly DMC deserves some strong consideration in the Belmont if she runs. She didn\'t care for that strip at Churchill at all. Watch the replay. You can see her spinning her wheels and she still ran pretty well.
I don\'t think there is any question that IB will be the favorite if he runs.
Congrats to all who cashed in the Preakness!
I don't know about Hong Kong, but in Japan the horse's weight is included in the pps and substantial changes are thought to be an important handicapping factor. And, as everybody knows, most trainers assume something is seriously wrong when a horse starts to lose its appetite.
The telecast either wasn't on or I didn't see it at Kee, but I also wouldn't be at all surprised if Donna Barton Brothers, a very successful former jockey and wife of trainer Frank Brothers who I believe still exercises horses, would notice that SS lost that much weight, as she's very knowledgeable and has been around horses her entire life due to the fact that her mother Patti Barton was a tough and trail blazing jockey who rode on the Midwest circuit back in the 70s.
This probably falls into the category of information many of you either don't need and maybe don't even want to know, but seeing the name reminded me of a coincidence two years ago when Patti Barton---and about 75 of her friends—sat next to me at Kee, and I learned something from her that I'd been wondering about for a number of years, namely what's up with the large groups of older ladies who seem to be just about everywhere and are easy to pick out because they all wear the same purple dresses and red hats. The way she described it was basically a "girls just want to have fun" social society for women of a "certain age." In other words, except for the fancy clothes, the Red Hat Society, as its called, is kind of like a distaff version of the fun loving geezers who never miss a day at the OTB.
Nothing wrong with that Mall and thanks for weighing in.
Some of my tongue-in-cheek zing is not meant to slam people who are trying to do a job. But the timing of her comment almost had the same feeling as when your horse prematurely breaks through the gate and is quickly reloaded.
You almost feel beat before the race even starts.
I still think the 2 TDs -- Trevor Denman and Tom Durkin -- are the gold standard,
though each have slipped a bit and gotten away from the cool calm and collected
narrative style that put them on the top.
Each have had high profile gaffes in big spots -- Denman failing to recognize
that Pine Island had broken down in the BC Distaff and Mine That Bird kind of
sneaking up on Durkin in the 09 Derby.
Larry Collmus (GP/Mth) and Staten Island\'s John Dooley (FG/AP) are solid. Michael
Wrona (Northern California, was canned at FG when CD took over) is very
underrated.
Vic Stauffer has 2 types of calls-- one for when Joel Rosario wins and another
call for when any other jock wins. I guess VS is still JR\'s agent.
The worst (my opinion) is Tampa Bay\'s announcer. He sounds like he should be on a
sidewalk outside of a cheap strip joint in New Orleans, or at a state fair in Iowa
trying to get you to pay to see a 2 headed calf. Convinced that the only way he
keeps this gig is through some sort of blackmail.
Sorry for all those who missed Keeneland racing before they installed a track
announcer. Very surreal-- only the sound of pounding hooves and, eventually, the
roar of the crowd as the field approached the grandstand.
Full Disclosure: My dream job has always been to be a race caller in Jamaica,
Barbados or Australia, where I could be the race caller with the funny accent.
I was at a graduation party and so only watched the race segment of the NBC broadcast with the sound on. After Barton made her comment, I think the announcers said that Pletcher had told them earlier that Super Saver had lost 100 pounds since the Derby. I assumed at the time that the Pletcher interview had been on-air, but maybe I was mistaken.
Sight,
Would you please comment on water weight lost after a race and generally if it\'s possible for a horse to drop 100 lbs in two weeks.Years ago, 20-30 lbs after a race was what the vets told me.Did SS look tucked up, not to my eyes, he\'s not the most robust horse to start with.
Whats your experience,thanks.
Mike
My favorite track announcer by far is Kurt Becker at Keeneland. Cool, calm, and collected.
Others:
Mark Johnson-CD
Durkin-BEL/SAR
Not good:
Grunder-TB....calm down...it\'s just a 5K claimer
Terry Wallace/Oaklawn...has obviously called a ton of races over the years, but he seemed to really struggle this year. So much stuttering that I actually thought something was physically wrong with him.
Paul Allen at Canterbury is pretty damn good. He could probably move on to bigger things at the track anytime he wanted to, but he\'s pretty well tied in here in the Twin Cities. He\'s got an AM radio show and is also the voice of the Vikings. You hear his clips all the time on ESPN. He also runs a small stable of low level claimers along with a few other partners. Goes by the name Slow Pay Stable, which has to be one of the best stable names of all time.
Durkin, Denman & Collmus are my faves, even though as others have noted, Durkin and Denman are slipping at times. Gonna happen to all of us, eventually. Have a heart, boys.
Dooley has too many weird phrasings that distract from the race: \"[Some horse making a move] is being produced\". What? WTF does that mean, \"is being produced\"? Or, \"[The horse on the lead] spins \'em in!\" Huh? Just call the damn race, meat, and stop looking for unnatural \"signature\" calls.
Wrona is contrived, period. He\'s been in the U.S., what 30 years? Yet the accent is as thick as if he just came in from the Outback. That\'s baloney. The only saving grace here is having an inconsequential announcer call meaningless racing -- one of those perfect symmetries that don\'t come along very often in life.
Grunder at TBD has a voice that should have never passed an audition for calling races. I can\'t comment on the actual substance of his race call, because I can\'t listen to him call an entire race before blood starts spurting from my ears. Maybe he\'s great from a technical perspective, but I can\'t chance it.
Someone said Grunder is a screamer...and what, Terry Wallace isn\'t? Good gawd, dude, tone it down before you have an apoplectic seizure -- every race at Oaklawn DOES NOT have the next Smarty Jones in it.
Wish we could have Luke K. and Kevin Goemmer back (R.I.P. guys). Neutral dialect, great sense of propriety (call intensity matched perfectly to the battle at hand, not trumped-up in any way), light use of \"signature\" calls...both of these gentlemen knew their place, and knew that they were there to describe and augment the show; contrast with Wrona, who thinks he IS the show.
Vic Stauffer does a great job and admits to betting on races he calls-nuttin\' wrong wit dat, and you can hear it in his excitement.
What you said. Yes, common is 20-30 lbs via lasix, sweating (2-3% of body weight) - which the horse should put back on in a few days. 100 lbs (10% of body weight) indicates to me a horse who needs a break. Moving down, not moving up and getting fitter.
Easier to assess in hindsight, especially if the horse has been training well enough, cleaning up it\'s feed, going about it\'s work every morning without complaint. Every horse is different. It\'s very difficult to keep these horses fresh throughout the TC series. But don\'t discount SS this fall. Good horse.
The best advice is sift carefully through the reports from people on the ground at Churchill in the mornings for three weeks before Derby. People pay good money for private clockers and private experienced observers. Try to hook into that source if one can.
You guys ever think that this was the reason Pletcher thru in Aikenite? Maybe he figured to have 2 horses come off a top effort to hope that one of them fired?
I seriously doubt it.
Aikenite was a closer and he threw him in. Plenty of trainers before him such as Baffert and Lukas have run two.
Sight I agree that SS is not a total bum. But man that was bad and the line looked pretty good. Even if he was a bad play at the price he did not look like a horse who was going to be dusted 11+.
Meanwhile as SS is getting beaten up (by me) perhaps Pletcher needs to be asked if he second guesses how he prepared the horse.
Bafferts horse had every reason to mail one in but he was ready.....
Baffert recognized it was better not to give Lucky a workout before the Preakness-Pletcher was not as astute
Why the conspiracy theory? Those horses are owned by two separate renowned organizations in this sport. Dogwood had a nice colt in good form and wanted to run him in a Classic. Simple as that in my eyes. You want every millionaire independent owner who uses Pletcher, with their own huge investments in these animals to bow down to the almighty Super Saver and skip the Classics? If it was the same owner that would be a different story.
Its not a conspiracy theory just a possibility. BOTH horses had a minimal amount of rest entering that race and were fast compared to the field at their best. Aikenite was actually faster coming in than SS. Pletcher knowing the conditions of these horses why put AIKENITE out of all his horses from the fleet? He could have easily advised the owners to wait for Belmont and come in the race with rest. He didnt and something just seems a little off especially with both horses having very similar situations. Just dont see the point of entering 2 horses who just happened to be 2 of the fastest in the race with no rest.. it would make sense to me if he wanted a backup horse who is fast at his best just in case the other one didnt fire.. especially with both horses having 2 totally different running styles.
Just a quick point.
If I owned Aikenite and Pletcher told me he didn\'t want to run him in the Preakness because SS was shooting for a chance at the Triple Crown, I would fire him that same day and take ALL of my horses to someone else.
AIK was doing well, the connections wanted to run him in a classic, they obviously thought the Preakness was a better spot compared to waiting for a 1 1/2 in the Belmont (which I agree with), and Pletcher did the right thing by running him.
HIGHLY doubt this had anything to do with the condition of SS. Simply a trainer trying to be fair to all of his horses and owners.
From I\'ve read/heard/understood this was a 100% owners decision. Immediately after the Bluegrass at Keeneland, Dogwood\'s Cot Campbell wrote up a path to Pimlico and after the Derby Trial, Campbell told Pletcher, this horse is running in the Preakness.
That is that. Pletcher can advise them all he wants. It\'s their horse. Some owners give full control to trainers, others do not.
Pletcher had absolutely nothing to do with the decision to run Aikenite.
Im not saying this had anything to do with SS winning the triple crown. I am saying it makes sense that he would want a backup horse in the race.. meaning it wouldve been ok for Aikenite to win...meaning he probably loved the idea of him being in there. Me being a thorograph user if Pletcher was ok for me to run Aikenite off 3 weeks rest after the horse JUST raced a huge 1 top effort (compared to his other numbers) I would fire him myself... he did the same thing with keyed entry years ago and that didnt pan out of course. If it was JUST the owners then fine but it was a foolish decision imo. As a trainer I wouldve advised to wait.. pletcher didnt care to me cause of that backup horse idea. Aikenite is now knocked out for while til he recovers from that big jump and top effort he just ran anyway.
The rest is always 1 on the list when a horse jumps THAT much last out. 6 weeks wouldve been MUCH better than the 3 weeks he got even going a little longer in distance next out.
You\'re probably right Sekrah and it is their right to tell their trainer to enter a horse in any race they want, especially the classics. These horses were balls out trying to get in condition for the classics so why not run in them? Sheets prompted race spacing or not. That\'s what these huge owners dream of, being on that stage. A Grade 3 at Presque Isle isn\'t quite the same. i don\'t know about you guys but I think the Preakness is always the best race in the country. Because it actually has a star of the movie. 99% of the public can\'t identify with any horses in the Kentucky Derby beforehand but only afterwards there is a star created to the general public and a storyline to follow for the masses. The Belmont is only ever I had to pick one I\'ll take the Preakness.
I personally think that rest is one of the most misunderstood factors of horses and form cycles. Quite simply, every race either puts something into a horse or takes something out of them. And not all horses are the same.
In general it takes 2-3 weeks for a horse to really begin to recover from an effort. A bigger effort can require more time, but not always. Sometimes not racing a horse or giving them too much time in between starts is a BAD thing.
I think it is very important to take into consideration the circumstances that surrounded the big effort when trying to evaluate how likely that horse is to regress, move forward or hold form into their next race. Was there a track bias that benefited the horse in his move up race (almost sure not to run as well next out), was there a change in meds or equipment (likely to run just as well again), did the horse get a perfect trip or pace set up (almost sure not to run as well without that same set up), did the horse have a good foundation to begin with (more likely to recover quickly), was there a surface or distance change, etc.
I think a person can have much more luck with pattern handicapping if they take some of these things into account when looking at the numbers. The numbers by themselves often don\'t tell the whole story. In Aikenite\'s case, he may have really liked the slop or the cut back in distance to a one turn mile. He may not have run any harder in the Churchill race than he did at Keenland or Gulfstream before that. If the Preakness was a one turn mile on a sloppy Churchill track he may well have run another 1 or even better. Had he rested three more weeks and come back at 1 1/2 in the Belmont he probably would have run worse.
I guess what I am trying to say is that just because a horse runs big doesn\'t mean they have to have extended rest or they won\'t fire again. You can\'t just take the effort and numbers at face value by themselves. You have to look at the circumstances around the effort and take them into account, and I don\'t think you can be too rigid with how you apply rest standards to any particular horse or pattern.
But that being said, in general, I agree that big efforts spaced too close together will almost always eventually catch up with a horse. And if one doesn\'t do it, two usually will. So I like to see 4-6 weeks rest at some point between races. More rest than that is usually a negative for me unless it was a planned vacation or part of a trainer\'s plan for targeting a specific goal. And if I see a really big effort, especially one that comes off a layoff (see Quality Road in the Donn), I will almost always play that horse to regress unless I see or hear positive info about how the horse is training.
Eventually all horses need a break and if you don\'t give it to them they give it to themselves.
Last Saturday was also the 20th anniversary of Dogwood\'s only classic win, so there may have been some sentiment involved.
I dont know who it was, but I think the guy who just called the Preakness did a terrible job.
The new guy at CD (from England) is the best I have ever heard. I like now just to listen to the CD races even if i have nothing on them just for the pleasure of listening to his race calls. Sort of like it was with Trevor Denman in the late 80s early 90s.