I was travelling so I haven\'t caught up on all of the posts but unless I missed it, I am surprised that no one brought up the issue of bad breaks after big efforts relative to Animal Kingdom and the Preakness.
Both as a fan of the game and for my wager, I was pulling for AK and when he broke poorly, the first thing I thought of was the many discussions we have had on the board over the years on how often horses who run big often break poorly in the first race after the big effort.
I am not saying that it was for sure correlated but it does seem to happen quite frequently.
The horse ran amazingly well all things considered but the bad break left him with too much to do.
He also broke poorly in the Derby. I\'m not sure which race he broke worse, but he wasn\'t \'quick from the blocks\' at Churchill either.
Velazquez said exactly that after the race. \"Left him with too much to do.\" He also commented on the fact that AK was getting a lot of dirt kicked in his face and he needed to find a spot to settle him down. However I\'m still surprised that AK couldn\'t run Shack down after those early fractions. You really have to hand it to the winner - I know I\'m not the only one who saw those early splits and thought \"he\'ll be done by the top of the stretch.\" HP
I absolutely thought Shack was in trouble after the first quarter but Castanon really slowed it down in the next half mile such that the 6f time for the preakness was quite reasonable.
It was really only the first 1/4. Jesus brought the race to a crawl in the interior 1/4s. If my math is right the next two splits were run almost 8 lengths slower than Rachel/Big Drama and 10+ lengths slower than Hard Spun after 6F. I\'m sure someone can correct if I am wrong.
Is it reasonable to think here that the credit for the race slowing down some down the backstretch should go to Cornelio Velasquez (Flashpoint) rather than Castanon?
I wondered the same thing. If Flashpoint had run-off in 45, 1\'09\" would Shackleford have chased or rated off the lead?
Jim,
It seems to be uncanny how many \" bad break \" horses repeat race after race the same start scenario. I\'ll agree with the bad break after a top syndrome.
Motion is no doubt a top shelf horseman so it makes you wonder if it is even something that is correctable via schooling in the gate ? Many times I\'ll eliminate a horse for the very fact that he has gate issues time after time.
At least AK can run fast enough to get back into a classic race after his initial trouble !
Frank D.