Interesting piece by Mike Penner OCT25.
Was this the story in which Beyer puts the knock on the sheets?
If so, it was right-on for this set of races...no?
JB\'s calls were terrible almost the entire day...not so much for his selections that lost, but for the winners and some placed horses, which ran much better than one would have guessed from reading his completely dismissive remarks about them.
Don\'t bothering answering this because I can\'t justify keeping this site on my \'favorites\' list...it\'s more like a longshot.
I think JB did a good job of informing this year; I for one have always been anti-Frankel
in the BC, and that proved out, and the cross-country ship (and blazing heat!) hurt
the eastern horses. What is so challenging about this game is that horses are not machines, so hitting the BC is near impossible anyway! He called the Distaff alright; it\'s not his fault that the jocks let Adoration walk for 7 furlongs. The Fillies was his only bad call; Halfbridled IS a monster who had no reason to go backwards, and FM was a HUGE underlay and was guaranteed to run last, based on the connections! He was hurt in the sprint and mile by the Frankel factor, but his analysis was valid!
Ironically, the Euros dominate the Turf when they were expected to be hurt by the heat, yet many of us forgot that Europe had record heat this year, while the east coast had a mild summer and an early fall. Juvenile races are the hardest thing to quantify on any methodology we use, plus this race fell apart
completely! How often do you see a grade 1 on the dirt one by a dead closer at SA??
The Turf call wasn\'t bad; he spoke highly of Johar and Tin Man, and Stormin FINALLY bounced (who knew?).
Congaree got smoked on the pace, a Frankel horse hits the board, and Mandella\'s magic day was crowned!
It is also hard to compute the affects of 99 degree heat on track maintanence, and to me, this was not the usual west coast drag-strip i\'m used to seeing. I really think the dirt
played against it\'s usual bias.
Being anti-Frankel eliminates one horse, maybe two. That\'s still leaves you a far cry from cashing. And his dope on Mandella was his horses tended to tail off after a campaign.
To say his only bad call was in the fillies is nuts.
He wasn\'t close in the mile. (Why Peace Rules? His only turf numbers weren\'t competitive. What was he going to do, pair up his 0 dirt number?
He all but laughed at L\'Ancresse in the Filly and Mare Turf.
Action This Day. Here is a horse who has run two 13\'s facing a horse who has run two 0\'s. Isn\'t that a difference of like 26 lengths? I can see why Cuvee tanked but where was the rest of the field? ATC was easily the slowest horse in the race by TG figs.
Nothing in the analysis to indicate Pleasantly Perfect, again, the slowest horse in the race.
The only good call was Cajun Beat and Shake You Down.
Sorry to harp but a bad day is a bad day.
Breeder's Cup and The Derby are the two days every year where we who are interested in this game are asked to put our reputations on the line to the outside world. My kid, my mother and even my x wife calls wanting to know who to bet. Like good football gamblers that normally have a boat full of games to pick and select from every week they too get forced into a corner with a gun pointed to their heads every Super Bowl Sunday. I still have a photocopy of a 20 dollar exacta box ticket from 2000 BC Turf race with KALANISI and QUIET RESOLVE pasted on my desk thanks in part to JB's analysis of QR. Chill out chief, tomorrows another day.
JR:
Lighten up! Didi you get hosed at the windows??
I tossed ALL the Frankels after his lone lock
(sightseek) tanked!
Peace Rules?? Remember, he ran nice turf #\'s
as a 2YO, runs great on the dirt at 3, and most would expect him to move forward on the turf. Most who run solid on turf at 2 come back strong on it at 3!!
Turf races in general?? Again, most made the mistake of EXPECTING the Euros to tank in the heat...not this year, especially with the hot
summer they had!
The colts?? Gimmee a break! The race collapsed, and yes, the slowest won it. You never know what will happen with 2yo\'s, on top of which you have not addressed the track bias issue, which blows most analysis out of the water!
I knew it was going to be a touch day when Stellar comes from nowhere to win the opener. I had her on class edge, but again, speed fell apart all day.
Beyer says he has \"philosophical differences\" with the Thoro-Graph and Ragozin sheets.
\"I respect them,\" he says. \"They\'re as serious about what they\'re doing as my associates and I. I\'ve always been dubious about the premise that you can just look at numbers on a page or on a sheet of paper and foretell future trends. \'You know, this horse is getting stronger, this horse is due to regress.\' Just by looking at how fast they run.
\"I think that\'s a bit simplistic and unrealistic. That\'s my personal opinion... All of us — they and we — make numbers that express how a horse performed in the past. They would maintain that certain patterns of these numbers will foretell the future. I\'m not a believer in that premise.\"
\"Mandella was his horses tended to tail off after a campaign.\"
PP hardly had what you wuld call a campaign this year. One race as a tuneup.... a race which Mandella said he was only cranked 80% or so.
BC was his target. I thought he had a forward moving line and might go negative.
Sure there were many who had run neg. numbers but to call PP the slowest??
I thought that honor bleonged to EA or FC going in.
The juvenile winner hardly had a \"campaign\" either having just broke his maiden.
Just an observation