Not to mention that she ran third in the 2004 Arc\' and by all accounts of those on the scene, probably would have won the race with a better trip.

I don\'t know where these clowns come away with the idea that \"she wasn\'t the best horse\" last year but that she simply \"got the best trip\".....Huh?

She was the best bet to win her repsective race on the entire card in last year\'s BC.......PERIOD!

She won under a hand ride like she was out for a morning gallop and I\'ll bet that her connections are still kicking themselves in the ass for not running in the BC turf after they saw how pathetic the \"big\" horses ran in that race.

She may not be the horse she was last year but she probably doesn\'t need to be to win this thing.

Will she be a dead nuts single on all of my serial bet tickets, like she was last year?...No!

Is she a horse that I am going to \"throw out\" just to show all the so called \"experts what a tough guy I am and how bold a stand I can make?....Of course not.

She is a horse who is a legitimate top contender to win the race, especially with JB picking up the mount. Respect should be afforded her, especially in the serials.

Of course you don\'t bet her to win at 6-5 but you don\'t beat yourself by being to stubborn to acknowledge her talents.

Clark,

You are right on the mark with your comments and JB is correct in that you should submit this post as a letter to the editor at one or more of the major, national racing publications.

As far as what we, the horseplayers, can do about it...I submit that a good, old-fashioned boycott would be a good place to start.

As all seasoned and disgruntled horseplayers know, without us there IS no game.

Take away the wagering dollars and there will be no million dollar yearlings sold in Kentucky every year.

There will be no Todd Pletchers and Nick Zitos with their barns full of million dollars babies,

AND there will be no BC or TC campaigns with thier million dollar purses.

United we stand, divided we fall.

You are the \"U\" in the union.

Solidarity forever!

Personally, I haven\'t wagered on a horse race since last years BC and the outcome of this years KD has only reinforced my opinion that I made the correct six months ago.

If the players feel this strongly about the current state of affairs in racing then it is time to step up to the plate and take a stand!

Or else, Jeff Mulins REALLY is right!

If this horse wins the TC I\'ll eat pile of dog ****!

The results of this year\'s KD underscore how far racing has fallen and how pathetic it has become....And it helped to expose N. Zito for the over-rated horseman that he is.

Too, too bad.....but then again, on the bright side the winner can go back to California finish racing through his conditions.

Since Crist and Beyer hate High Limit, he will probably do quite well...LMFAO!

Except for FuPeg when was the last time any of those clowns at the DRF publicly picked the winner of the Derby?

Having not been to Ney York City for many years I have not had a chance to see first-hand the state of affairs at any of the NYRA tracks. However, a good friend of mine on the East coast visited New York this past winter and sent me the e-mail that is copied below which descibes the conditions at Aqueduct....

\"speaking of the Big A, the A stands for appaling, atrocious, you name it.  I went there for the first time in years on Saturday.  The place has really gone downhill.  A good portion of it is closed off as that is where they want to put slots.  It is like maze with most of the stairways closed.  To get to the seats was a nightmare.  In the clubhouse, up 3 flights of stairs, back out to the grandstand, through 3 different lounges, and finally a seat.  All of them covered with birdsh!@#$t.  This was my girlfriends first trip to a race track.  I guess I did not paint an ugly enough picture as she did not think it was that bad.  Wait until she see\'s Saratoga.  Anyway, Big A needs to go.  NYRA should build a winter track inside of the inner turf at Belmont which is a mile and 3/16th\'s so fitting a one mile track there should not be a problem.  For all of NYRA\'s money troubles, the land that Big A occupies must be worth many millions.  The place borders JFK Airport so it is prime commercial real estate.  We stand in line to get a soda, the guy behind the counter is some drunk, he is beet red and shaking like a leaf.  I felt bad for the guy in a way.  A really sad place, you can see at one time it must have really been something.  Out back on the porch, you get a nice view of the Manhatten skyline.  A couple of regulars made me laugh as they were counting the days to Belmont so the could \"get away from this f-cking dump\".  If it is nice I will go down to Belmont for opening day.  I doubt I will be going back to the Big A anytime soon\".......

Pretty darned pathetic if you ask me.

Without regard to Jerry Brown\'s verbal narrative on the Derby, it should be pointed out that anyone who understands how to interpret the TG numbers could have narrowed the race down to four (and only four) legitimate contenders for the win! This after listening all spring to the so-called experts blathering on and on about how \"wide open\" the race was...etc...ad nauseum!

In an 18-20 horse field this gives you a huge edge...Especially when the two fastest of these horses are paying 4-1 or better.

Of the four horses, three of them finished in the top five, two of them completed the exacta and they keyed a trifecta payoff of almost 500-1 and a superfecta payoff of over 20,000-1!

Personally, I don\'t know how much more one could expect? At some point a player must make up their own mind and take a stand...I read all of the same data as everyone else and what I saw were two horses key to the race, (especially after it started raining).

As it turned out they were collectively much the best. The numbers said that SJ was quite simply the fastest of them all so I took my stand and ignored the possibility that he might very well bounce. He didn\'t and the second fastest horse chased him home.

TCE and RTF had other negatives that I thought outweighed the likelyhood that SJ would bounce. On this day that is what happened and as it turned out I was correct and rewarded nicely for my efforts.

Often things don\'t work out the way you hope when you design a play. In this case they did.

It is also worth noting that while Jerry did give TCE and LH a 50% chance to win the race, he further stated that if one of them didn\'t win it there was a 30% or so chance that the winner would be SJ or RTF. That\'s an 80% probability among four entrants out of an 18 horse field (20 when he was doing his analysis)

Hell, you could have bet all four of them and turned a profit on the race.  This in a race where none of the handicapping illiterati around the country could come up with anything close to the winner!

Very insightful KD analysis by Thorograph.

Anyone who had the TG information for the Derby should have walked away with a nice score yesterday...

I think it is possible  for someone who was bankrolled properly to have made million dollar score given the pool sizes. By my estimation if there had been another five hundred $2 trifecta tickets sold, it would have reduced the payoff to around $950 or so and another ten supers out of the pool would have reduced that payoff to around $37,500....wonder what others think?

Finding anything in those archives would take the rest of my life...fill us latecomers in on this story...Thanks

Couldn\'t agree more...What a dud of a race she threw to confirm it...

Of course Gold Mover was all out to hold off that $25,000 claimer who went off at 60-1...Just don\'t think any of them in that field were that good.

The NTRA\'s Players Panel needs to address three things:

1. Drugs-the ones they give horses, not the ones that humans use.

2. Declining field size and quality due to over-racing. (remember, according to Richie Eng\'s article a few weeks ago, three new casinos have opened in Las Vegas this year and none of them have a racebook in them!)

3. Reducing takeout and reforming the tax code as it applies to gambling winnings. -Gamblers are treated worse under the current tax laws than gangsters and drug traffickers and no one seems to give a damn!

If they do and are able to motivate any meaningful change, then they will have served the community of players well. If they don\'t or aren\'t able to motivate change then nothing else matters.
I have expressed my concerns to this group and Jim Quinn has personally assured me that these issues will be squarely on the agenda of the Panel. I\'ll wait and see....

Safe trips, wide posts etc...The record of top riders like Bailey & Day speaks for itself.

Nobody complains when they bring home the winner. Only when they loose. That goes for trainers and handicappers alike.

Frankly, I don\'t think it would have mattered much who was riding EM in the Belmont. Getting a good trip in a six horse race from a horse with tactical speed is no big deal. Especially when two of the six have no chance of threatening for a serious piece at the finish.

Getting a good trip from a closer like TMW is somewhat trickier, even in a six horse field. I watched the race and replay and came away thinking that TMW ran the best race of the two. He may not have been THAT wide, but he raced wider than EM around both turns and lost by a minimal, diminishing margin. Point is though, he lost and EM won. It still produced an exacta payoff of 20-1 in what was arguably a three maybe four horse race for the top two slots. With horses involving two of the preeminent riders in the game and maybe two of the best of all time.

It doesn\'t get much better than that.

The 1 in 129 statistic regarding a NY-bred winning the Kentucky Derby is meaningless...
There is an old saying used in the study of probability that \"statistics never lie.\"

The 1-129 stat is a perfect example of this.

The relevant number is the percentage of winners from total starters.

I have no idea how many NY-breds have gone to the post in the Kentucky Derby but I would imagine that it is a small fraction of the total number of Kentucky-breds who have run in the race. If NY-breds averaged one starter per year for the last 129 years then the number of NY-bred winners is about what should be expected. If the race had consisted of 10 or 12 NY-breds and one or two Kentucky-breds for the last 129 years, how many Kentucky-bred winners do you suppose there would have been?

There is no question that over the years NY-breds haven\'t been on a par with Kentucky-breds but that is to be expected considering that Kentucky is the home breeding state for the vast majority of the so-called \"blue-blood\" breeding stock.

Over the years had the race consisted of an equal number of starters being Kentucky, New York, Florida and California bred , I believe that you would have seen more than a fair share of the winners coming from states other than Kentucky.

Churchill Downs sucks anyway...

If Funny Cide is taken down over this allegation, I will never bet a North American horserace again!

Yesterdays Miami Herald caption alledged that the photo \"clearly showed a bronze colored, metalic object\" in Santos right hand...

Today the Herald, (according to the DRF front page report) states that the photo \"depicts a dark in the space between Santos\' right hand and his whip\"....Now, which is it going to be?

I thought the photo was a stretch of the imagination in the first place, now the paper that broke the story can\'t even come up with a good interpretation.

Not only that but if you watch the replay of Santos switching the whip to his left hand shortly after he crosses the finish line, it doesn\'t appear that he has anything in his hand other than the whip handle. He makes the switch much to quick and smoothly for him to have been juggling another object in the same hand...

Maybe those hillbillies down in Florida are just sore loosers because they wanted their Florida Derby hero to win the Derby...Or maybe those hillbillies in Kentucky are sore because a NY-bred gelding finally stole their thunder....

Go Funny Cide!



Post Edited (05-11-03 14:16)