Beyer was less impressed than we were.  DRF has an 85 posted for the effort.

On the heels of their rep making a big to-do about resigning from the BC board since they wouldn\'t extend the lasix ban to the older horses.

Rich Curtis Wrote:
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> The only conversations Eddie D stays out of are
> the ones he doesn\'t know are taking place.

Funny line.

Going for the TC means more than winning it.  Once a horse has won it, the owners will be hard-pressed to race him at 4, and that\'s if the horse even races through the rest of his 3yo year.  So a horse rushed off to stud as soon as it turns into racing PR\'s golden goose will just make it a Canadian goose.

richiebee Wrote:
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> On the morning after the Ky Derby, trainer Chad
> Brown seemed to unequivocally rule
> out Normandy Invasion running in the Preakness. 24
> hours later, on Monday morning,
> it seemed as if there was at least a possibility
> that NI would be a Preakness
> participant.
>
> Possible reasons for this 24 hour turnaround:
>
> A) NI came out of the race \"barely blowing\" while
> cooling out, \"bouncing off the
> walls\" after being returned to his stall, and ate
> \"every morsel in his feed tub\"
> the night after the Derby.
>
> B) There are no NW2LT allowance races for him to
> run in in the near future.
>
> C) He can not possibly get a more poorly judged
> ride than he got in Louisville.
>
> D) Chad Brown got a call from owner Rick Porter
> sometime Sunday night which
> followed the lines of \"What do you mean we\'re not
> running in the Preakness\" or
> \"We\'re running in the Preakness, aren\'t we?\"
>
> All of the above might be true to some extent, but
> I think the real reason for the
> turnaround is (bells ringing) SURVEY SAYS: \"D\" the
> owner and not the trainer wants
> to run the colt in the Preakness.
>
> Rick Porter has a Derby/Triple Crown jones and
> there is a pun intended there. In
> 2004, when Porter had his top 2YO prospect
> Rockport Harbor at Philly Park with
> trainer John Servis, Servis nearly captured the
> Triple Crown with Smarty Jones. So
> here you have Porter, spending literally millions
> at auction, and he watches
> Smarty Jones, bred and raised by his owners on a
> small Pennsylvania farm, win
> 2/3rds of the Triple Crown.
>
> I have been critical of Porter on this board with
> his handling of Rockport Harbor.
> Early in his 3YO year, while stabled at Oaklawn
> with trainer Servis in preparation
> for the Derby, RH had hoof issues. It looked like
> stopping on the big grey may
> have been the right thing to do, but instead they
> tried to rush preparations, all
> for the sake of making the Derby. The end result
> was that Rockport Harbor, who won
> two graded stakes races at Aqueduct as a 2YO, did
> not stay sound, and only started
> 4 more times in his career, running second in the
> Rebel at OP as a 3YO and winning
> the Essex there as a 4YO.
>
> Porter had better luck with Hard Spun, a 3YO of
> 2007, who competed in all three
> legs of the Triple Crown, finishing second in
> Kentucky, third in Baltimore and
> fourth at Elmont, all while many experts were
> opining that HS was either a
> sprinter or a turf horse. HS finished his 3YO
> season by running second in the BC
> Classic, with a stop along the way to take the 7
> furlong Kings Bishop at the Spa,
> a victory which led to him being named champion
> sprinter of 2007.
>
> In 2008, Porter had the worst kind of Derby luck
> imaginable. Strange that this man
> who seems to have Triple Crown fever has had his
> best success with older mares --
> Round Pond, Jostle, Havre de Grace, etc.
>
> So what to do with Normandy Invasion, whose
> trainer\'s immediate reaction to the
> Derby result was to rule out the Preakness, but
> whose owner has been bitten by the
> same bug which seems to have bitten Baffert and
> Zito and Pletcher and Lukas (whose
> Derby also rans will probably also run at
> Baltimore and at Belmont)?

Looks like A was the correct answer.

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/20130507_Normandy_Invasion_trainer_considering_Preakness.html

moosepalm Wrote:
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> From my vantage point, it was both a problem of
> what was being said, and who was saying it.  If
> one of the hip shooters who had been spouting
> gibberish all week made similar unsubstantiated
> proclamations, we would have been filing them in
> the same refuse pile as all the other unvarnished
> bilge that was inflicted upon this board.  But,
> this was a licensed professional with a great deal
> of expertise who offered opinions on numerous
> subjects with ex cathedra bearing.  All well and
> good when it was well documented, but some of it
> wasn\'t, and distinctions were not made, in terms
> of presentation, about what was being
> substantiated and what wasn\'t.  So, it all mushed
> together as if it was fact, when at least a couple
> of things could not be known by virtually anyone
> with the kind of certitude with which it was being
> presented.  And when substantiation was repeatedly
> requested, it still was not provided.  A person
> with a certain expertise is held to higher
> standards than the rest of us who traffic in the
> everyday BS of the realm.  Was this a capital
> crime?  I\'m not close enough to the issue to weigh
> the merits, but I can certainly see why it would
> piss off someone who is.

A total mischaracterization.  Her opinion was that the charges made here often regarding certain trainers cheating are unsubstantiated, and she believed it was unfair to tarnish those trainers\' character without substantiation.  You may not agree with her taking a stance in their defense, but it\'s a respectable position, one that is at the heart of our legal system.  If she was wrong, then the way to show that to readers is to present the proof, not banishment.

TGJB Wrote:
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> The filly won\'t be allowed to run IF they have 20
> with points who want to run. Seems to me if they
> want they can just enter and see, it\'s on a
> different day than the Oaks.
>
> But Pletcher already has Verrazano and a lot of
> others in there, he may not even want her in the
> Derby. She\'s not going to be a stallion, that\'s
> where the money is.

It\'s not about Pletcher though - it\'s about the owners of the horse.  Stonestreet doesn\'t own any of the other Pletcher Derby entrants.  If they want to try to run in the Derby, then Pletcher says \"Yes ma\'am\" and gets on it.  I don\'t get the idea, though, that she wants to run in the Derby with this filly.

Someone said that Verrazzo is a huge horse.  He\'s not.  He\'s good-sized but not overly tall or heavy.  Think Todd said he\'s 16.1.  So good-sized but not Zenyatta (now, that\'s huge).

high roller Wrote:
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> What is so exciting about running a distance
> challenged horse - so you and your entourage can
> get an owner\'s table? I say it\'s part and parcel
> of what\'s wrong with racing.
>
> I\'ll bet your horse against any horse (similar
> odds) any amount of money. So cool my foot!

Running a horse who earned its way into the Derby, who is healthy, is so far down the list of what\'s wrong with racing that you need a magnifying glass to see it.

It\'s one thing to discuss a horse\'s chances and another to just spit on it.  The latter is what\'s not cool.

PonyBologna Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> richiebee Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Speculation, patter, conjecture and yes,
> > overanalysis.
> >
> > Any chance pre entry special, say top 30 (ugh)
> > point earners plus ties,
> > sees the light of day by midweek?
> >
> > Speaking of the point system, all hail McPeek\'s
> > Java Whatever, standing in the Derby gate with
> 100
> > points and nary a dirt win.
>
>
> How many dirt wins did Animal Kingdom have going
> into the Derby?

He got raves for his works over the Churchill strip, so we could listen out to see if we hear that about Java.  If not, then feel safe to toss.  Irwin also has a good track record with horses in races like this, so I\'m inclined to keep that in mind.  Java isn\'t an Irwin horse, however.

sighthound Wrote:
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> Jerry - Steve Allday has said on the radio, to the
> general public, that he used to use EPO before it
> was banned, and he wasn\'t the only one.  Said it a
> few years back.  
>
> He didn\'t say it only to the Jockey Club.
>
> Race track vets used to milkshake, too, before
> that was banned, as a common practice.
>
> If it wasn\'t illegal, it was done.


Wait a second here.  This isn\'t steroids we\'re talking about, where there was tacit approval of the drug prior to it being banned.  Just because a drug isn\'t banned yet doesn\'t make it either right or legal.  When drugs are given in secret, that\'s all you have to know about it and its legality.

For what it\'s worth, Lukas talked about this, saying that Oxbow thrived with the racing and training whereas the other colt he felt was better off training up.

miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Tread,
>
> All irrelevant, the Wood was slow, thats all that
> counts, Grade 1, Grade 9 or whatever.NI ran
> marginally faster(maybe) than fillies that run in
> the 5 range.
>
>
> Mike

It was a strange race.  Now, you can make a case that Normandy Invasion is the common denominator in the two strangest Derby prep results thus far and it\'d be a decent case.  But when the speed to Verrazano\'s outside is held at the gate, and then a crawling pace ensues yet there\'s little sprinting for home, and you know for a fact that those top three are faster than that, then you have a really good case to put an asterick by it.

ajkreider Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, obviously she didn\'t run a jump in the Oaks,
> but Emollient\'s effort in the Ashland doesn\'t hurt
> your interpretation of Julia\'s number.

New surface?

joekay Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Question: do Kee and TP have the same synthetic
> track?  Thanks in a advance.

99.9% sure both are Polytrack.