I\'m going to go out on a limb & guess that the 15 or so articles I counted(but didn\'t read) fall into 2 basic categories. One is the H. Luro \"Don\'t squeeze the lemon dry\" school. The other believes the A. Jerkins\' observation that \"More races are won by horses working fast than horses working slow.\"
I hope someone corrects me if I\'m wrong, but I doubt that any article raises the more fundamental question of what role such a wk should play in your handicapping when a horse, like FC, has already been to the post 8 times. What I think I learned before I started focusing on 1sters & lightly raced horses is that you\'re much better off putting your trust in the nos. & pattern than in a fst work, unless the work is a \"failure\", which is true for fast wks much more often than one might ever imagine. An exception might be 1st time bl, the theory being that time of the work was because the horse probably worked in bl. The same theory does not apply to 1stL if the wk was within 5 days of the race, & there is also a school of thought that a fast wk for a horse taking a suspicious drop is a neg, the assumption being that the work is an attempt to entice others to clm an unsound horse.
What about FC\'s time? One thing you hear over & over again from clkers is that how the horse accomplished & came out of the wk is much more important than the time. Based on what I\'ve seen & heard, FC accomplished the wk easily & has been doing very well since, so from this stdpt one would view the wk as a positive, keeping in mind that FC is a horse that has to be jogged & galloped clockwise because he is impossible to control when he sees the finish line.
I think I\'ve mentioned before that every book on training & every trainer says that the key to wks is designing a progam which fits the individual horse. FC has a history of working fst & in fact the 6/3 wk is only 3 ticks faster than his wk before the Derby. Another plus, as I see it, for an improving horse at his home track.
I\'m still wondering if one can\'t make a case for 10MW, but this is one of those rare occasions when I agree with what seems to be the consensus view, that EM was probably the better horse going into the Derby, but that FC has improved so much since then that that may no longer be the case. The training job on EM reminds me a lot of Point Given. Baffert acknowledged after the fact that he didn\'t have PG at full throttle for the 1st leg because he was looking at a bigger prize, one which he had been nosed out of more than once. In this case, it seems to have been overconfidence that EM was much the best. EM has been trained much more aggressively this time around, & while I would like to see Frankel lose because of the way he\'s acted, I feel pretty safe in saying that EM doesn\'t know that his trainer has been making a complete fool of himself.
You the man Mall.
He\'s got all the idiosyncrasies of a Sheet player. Foul mouth (You can take the boy out of Brooklyn but you can\'t take the Brooklyn outta the boy) usually wrong about everything that goes into print and hell...he\'s just plain ugly. That man is an ugly individual. He looks like the Sheet players I\'ve seen ... a short, squat and rotund demonic troll.
Mark O\'Keefe...stay tuned...I have a Cupi Doll I may unveil before the Belmont to ensure Frankelstein changes his ways.
You know what I love most about this board now? The lack of carping over words like \"Cupi\". Why has it gotten so civil here? lol
Jerry, I hope you use the interrogatory format (That means mailed questions for perusing Sheet players :) ) to your advantage to answer why your numbers are superior to Sheets numbers. When the questions get circular, as they tend to do with ur perimeter friend at least we won\'t have to read the repetition. :)
I think one of the inquiries will pertain to figures over the years. I\'m really not sure you can compare horses from different eras ... even using figures...so many variables that impact figures exist, some of which we do not understand and others that aren\'t quantifiable. I saw Affirmed...he was a good horse but Seattle Slew had a 7 derby number (on Rags I believe With horrible trouble) and beat Affirmed the next year. I\'ve handicapped a lot of races. Era shifting really isn't possible all u can do is project. Good figures are good figures in their year. If you get to that result and have an ability to separate horses that are running against each other you\'ve accomplished all that is necessary.
Mall;
To your last line you might add that Funny Cide does not appear to understand that horses are supposed to react to - among other things - three point jumps to a negative 1.5 and 5f works in 57.06.
If I were Barclay Tagg, or were planning on keying FC on Saturday (which I am), the work would be of no concern to me.
1) Given the moisture in the track, I\'d bet Belmont was playing a least second fast. There\'s a lot of sand in the surface (hence the name \"Big Sandy\") and it gets extremely fast when wet. Maybe JB wants to weigh in on Belmont\'s track speed over the past weekend.
2) It\'s not \"How Fast They Work\", but \"How They Work Fast.\" By all accounts, the work was effortless and done well within himself. Seems to me he\'s a good feeling horse thats all ready to run. If he had worked 57 4/5 under pressure that would be different.
By way of example, Ten Cents A Shine worked 46 and change before the Preakness and was bet down accordingly for it. Our KY clocker sources told us visually the work was awful, done under a heavy drive with each furlong much slower than the furlong preceeding it. Meanwhile, we were told that Midway Road\'s breeze of 1:02 (or something close) was outstanding. He wasn\'t asked to run for anything other than a furlong which he completed in 11 seconds. Where did they finish up in Maryland?
Catalin,
Where the heck have you been? Good to hear you weigh in.
What hasn\'t been mentioned enough is the fact that Funny went the first three furlongs in 33 and change. The 57.86 was actually gearing down.
A 33 work before a mile and half race, hmmmmm wonder what their race day strategy might be?
\"The Work\" sure got everyone\'s attention.
I think a lot of good points have been made on this string but you have to view the work in the context of the questions you may have about Funny Cide heading into the race. Let\'s take a look at a few of the possible questions that you might have.
1) Did the fast work take too much out of him? As was noted earlier in the string, Funny Cide worked almost as fast at Belmont Park only 5 days before the Derby and that certainly did not seem to hurt him. Given that the surface may have been a little faster for his most recent work it would be hard to view it as a big negative.
2) Is Funny Cide over the top after his big Preakness effort? You would almost have to view the work as a positive with regard to that question.
3) Can Funny Cide get the mile and a half distance? In this regard, you would probably much prefer a fast early faster late work similar to his pre-Derby bullet as opposed to his very fast early fast late work on Tuesday. However, even here you have to put everything into context. Funny Cide is a free-running horse with a high cruising speed that he can maintain for a long time. Before the Derby, Tagg\'s main concern was getting him dead fit and getting him to relax early to ensure he could get the Derby distance given his supposedly suspect pedigree and his free-running style. Contrast that with before the Belmont, in which Tagg\'s main concern was just to let him recover from the prior two efforts while trying to maintain his current form and fitness. If anything, he may have (understandably) done too little with him prior to the latest work given their objectives and all the bad weather. So, if Funny Cide is indeed still fit and sound and in peak form, it is not surprising that he was really on the muscle early in his latest workout. That is exactly what you would expect if he is still feeling good and eager to run. You could even make the case that the work was just what was needed to take a little of the \"edge\" off him and make him a little less eager early in the race on Saturday.
I remember a similar discussion about 15 years ago when Risen Star had a very similar sizzling work just before the Belmont. I seem to recall that he won that race for fun in the fastest Belmont since Secretariat.
I don\'t know if Funny Cide will get the 1.5 mile distance and I don\'t know if a cranked-up Empire Maker can still beat him even if Funny Cide can get the distance but I certainly don\'t see this workout as a negative factor. If anything, the opposite.
This looks like a 2-horse race right from the start and I sort of like the Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader analogy that has been hinted at in some of the recent pre-race articles.
Let\'s hope the Belmont turns out to be \"Return of the Jedi\" rather than \"The Empire Strikes Back.\"
May the force be with the good guys...
Maybe it will distract us for a while from corked bats, steroids, EPO and hyperbaric chambers...
Chris
Catlin: The pt on the condition of the track is very well taken. While I was reading it, the one TVG commentator who is a professional dopester & who works extensively with So Cal clockers offered the opinion he & his cohorts were of the opinion that the track was close to 2 secs faster on 6/3. They also were of the view that the work appeared to be effortless.
That TVG reporter, Lifson, commented on the Belmont drawing show, that contrary to earlier reports that he saw FC come back to the barn area personally and he was still breathing quite heavily...more than expected after taking the long walk back from the main track.
C\'MON FC and NYS Breds!
Handicapping 101 : Speed unchallanged invariably wins?