I posted this earlier way down, but it fits better on this thread. Agree Zenyatta ran better than most here thought. But it was also clear here on this board, as opposed to the press, that her task was going to be much tougher than anything she\'d faced before. She arguably ran the race of her life, and by the end it looked like she\'d given everything she had.

Looking at the race again, it\'s easy to play \"what if\" about Zenyatta. But the truth is Blame actually ran just a little bit better than she did when it mattered, in fact he actually had to fully commit to kick for it sooner than she did and still held himself together. The pace was brisk but not suicidal, yet the front runners were starting to fold sooner than you\'d have thought they would have at this level of racing. So the moment of truth for the contenders which were close up came at the 5/16ths, just before coming out of the turn, instead of the preferred tactic of fully committing after you\'re out of the turn, balanced and upright. Blame, Lookin At Lucky, and Etched had to have their spots to strike already claimed and basically commit before they came out of the turn, or risk gaps closing if they\'d waited until straightening up. In that way, Zenyatta did almost exactly what she did last year: cut the corner inside and then move outside at the 3/16ths. If you watch both races from the 1/4 pole to the finish, her stretch run looks basically the same. Blame, however, had plenty of his own work to do. Once he got to his opening, it took him from the 1/4 pole to the 1/8 pole to fully beat back Lookin at Lucky. He was now fully committed, and then he still had to fend off Zenyatta, who was well out in the middle of the track. So he had to commit early and put two good ones away in succession, and yet he still kept finding more to do it. Zenyatta really put in her same run as last year in the final quarter mile - in fact she was the last one to commit, which the way this race unfolded, was an advantage. It may have taken her a bit longer to get outside, but the stretch run at Churchill is about 30 yards longer than Santa Anita. As Smith said in his press conference, he needed Blame to fold a little bit. And Blame never did.

As for Quality Road. I don\'t know about a dead rail or not, but it was clear once the gates opened his chances were slim-to-none. This was a very unhappy animal coming down the stretch the first time. He was on the wrong lead all through the first quarter mile, and his head was tilted to his right. It was clear this was never going to be his day by the time they went 10 strides into the race. Whether he was jarred up mentally by the lights, or the crowd, or whether he never fully recovered from his Met Mile, the fact is that before they went a 16th of a mile, any tickets with him on them were bound for the trash heap.

Smith said he was happy with her warmup, and having been on her for three years, he has to be given the benefit of any doubt. They way she ran bears testimony to the fact he was happy when they went into the gate.

Looking at the race again, it\'s easy to play \"what if\" about Zenyatta. But the truth is Blame actually ran just a little bit better than she did when it mattered, in fact he actually had to fully commit to kick for it sooner than she did and still held himself together. The pace was brisk but not suicidal, yet the front runners were starting to fold sooner than you\'d have thought they would have at this level of racing. So the moment of truth for the contenders which were close up came at the 5/16ths, just before coming out of the turn, instead of the preferred tactic of fully committing after you\'re out of the turn, balanced and upright. Blame, Lookin At Lucky, and Etched had to have their spots to strike already claimed and basically commit before they came out of the turn, or risk gaps closing if they\'d waited until straightening up. In that way, Zenyatta did almost exactly what she did last year: cut the corner inside and then move outside at the 3/16ths. If you watch both races from the 1/4 pole to the finish, her stretch run looks basically the same. Blame, however, had plenty of his own work to do. Once he got to his opening, it took him from the 1/4 pole to the 1/8 pole to fully beat back Lookin at Lucky. He was now fully committed, and then he still had to fend off Zenyatta, who was well out in the middle of the track. So he had to commit early and put two good ones away in succession, and yet he still kept finding more to do it. Zenyatta really put in her same run as last year in the final quarter mile - in fact she was the last one to commit, which the way this race unfolded, was an advantage. It may have taken her a bit longer to get outside, but the stretch run at Churchill is about 30 yards longer than Santa Anita. As Smith said in his press conference, he needed Blame to fold a little bit. And Blame never did.

As for Quality Road. I don\'t know about a dead rail or not, but it was clear once the gates opened his chances were slim-to-none. This was a very unhappy animal coming down the stretch the first time. He was on the wrong lead all through the first quarter mile, and his head was tilted to his right. It was clear this was never going to be his day by the time they went 10 strides into the race. Whether he was jarred up mentally by the lights, or the crowd, or whether he never fully recovered from his Met Mile, the fact is that before they went a 16th of a mile, any tickets with him on them were bound for the trash heap.

Smith said in his post race interview she wasn\'t handling the dirt getting kicked back in her face at first, so she took herself back that far early to get away from it. This was the biggest field she\'s faced on a natural dirt track, so the amount coming back had to be a lot; she\'s never been stung by that much sand at once. The kickback on the synthetics is nothing like the natural stuff.

Gomez did the smart thing and let Blame drift out towards the middle so he could see her, and the more he drifted closer the more Blame was digging in to keep his advantage. She didn\'t go past him in the gallop out after the wire, so in the last few yards of the race they both had basically nothing left. She was forced to lay it all down for the fist time in her life. That last bit of energy she needed to close the deal just wasn\'t there, probably spent by having to make up all that ground just to get herself in it.

Solid point. He had two tries at 10 furlongs last year in Grade 1 Company: The Travers and The Jockey Club Gold Cup. Both were run over sloppy tracks. In the former he basically had an inside trip throughout with dead aim at the head of the stretch, but got run over by both Summer Bird & Hold Me Back. In the latter race he took over after a slow early quarter, led through the same moderate pace, and still couldn\'t contain Summer Bird. It\'s not that it\'s impossible for him in the Classic this time, but you have to figure if there is any horse capable of staying the trip even slightly better, that will be enough to get by Quality Road at this distance. I\'d like his chances a lot better if this was at 9 furlongs instead of ten.

Let\'s leave aside whether she\'s sore or not now and go back to the run up to the BC Classic last year. Going into that one, there were faster horses - mostly Quality Road who ended up scratching at the gate when he flipped out mentally. What\'s most apparent is the synthetic surface, where she has made all but 3 of her lifetime starts, helped her enormously and the faster figure horses not so much at all. In fact Zenyatta\'s closest pursuers in the 09 Classic were two grass horses: Gio Ponti and Twice Over. The synthetic loving male rivals last year - Colonel John, Richard\'s Kid, Awesome Gem - can best be described as inconsistent.

She\'s going to be a huge favorite this year because of her press & popularity. But on a natural dirt surface at Churchill which doesn\'t hurt her most serious rivals like the synthetic tracks do, she\'s tough to take a short price. It\'s not to say Zenyatta can\'t win, sore or not. But it was interesting that some of her most recent victims haven\'t done a lot to flatter her when they\'ve gone elsewhere. Most recently Rinterval & Zardana (Zenyatta\'s stable mate) showed up at Keeneland against a weak bunch in the Spinster and were nowhere to be found when the big checks were passed out.

Zenyatta has been basically carrying thoroughbred racing on her back for the last 3 years in terms of public recognition so she deserves a lot of credit for that. But even getting the weight she\'ll get from the likes of Blame & Quality Road - and her having to give weight to Lookin At Lucky -  she\'s tough to take at the very short price you\'ll get at Churchill.

Denman & Durkin suffer from the same disease: Race Caller Delusions of Grandeur Syndrome. Common among race caller megalomaniacs, it makes them \"script\" their race calls days or weeks ahead of the actual running of the race itself. Race Caller Delusions of Grandeur Syndrome is more than reliance on a bank of commonly used phrases - it rests on the idea that the race caller is THE most important thing about any horse race. Who knew John Gaines had it in mind to create the Breeders Cup primarily as a showcase for egomaniacal race callers???

\"D & D\" are profoundly aware of the air time big races & their endless replays get. So they decide in advance how THEY think THEY should sound, so viewers will talk about nothing but THE RACE CALL. The reason Chic Anderson\'s call of the 1973 Belomont Stakes stands out is because it WASN\'T scripted. It was organic. He was as awestruck as everbody watching it and that\'s what came through in his call that day. These two \"best announcers\" (and that\'s really debateable) want the recognition of a call like Anderson\'s but miss the point on why it was great.


Denman screwed up because the races weren\'t run according to the script he laid out in his head weeks beforehand. And he came off looking like a hack becasue of it. Durkin has suffered form this too, many times. I\'ve actually heard that Durkin literally writes down the phrase he\'s going to say at a given point in a prticular race (exactly like a hackneyed playwright trying to \"direct his play from the page\"), regardless of whether it\'s appropriate. He & Denman never want us to forget: the horse race is really all about their race calls (i.e., them).

Mullins has said he wouldn\'t serve a suspension. If they give him days, he\'s gonna quit. We can only hope he\'s as good as his word this time.

Anyone else notice that his horses at Del Mar, after the publication of this story, have basically been running up the track? Maybe someone can correct me, but I noticed the Asmussen barn is also underperforming since he\'s been out.

Has the spotlight on The Move Up Guys (largely started, heroically, by Thorograph) gotten to hot for them?

Need help understanding something. June 10th, Belmont Stakes Day, I look over the card at Belmont in my DRF, and see Pletcher\'s barn had won 11 of 33 races to that point. Fine. Business as usual. Or maybe not...

I open my DRF today for tomorrow\'s card, and see that he\'s now 12 winners from 59 starters. Can this be? The Mighty Pletcher Juggernaut has had 1 winner from 26 starters in 3 weeks at this current Belmont meet? What, did I miss a crackdown on him, or him & others? No wonder he sent a huge string to run at Churchill Downs this spring. They obviously are still looking the other way at that joint.

If someone can, please explain. Thanks.

Many rightly believe that the biggest dark cloud in racing to develop over the last 10 years is the \"Move Up Trainer\" phenomenon, or what used to be called \"Mystifying Form Reversal\" phenomenon. It\'s more widespread now than ever.

Like Wayne Lukas himself said recently (paraphrasing): we all know there are trainers, and there are chemists out there among us. And those chemists hurt the game, in every way.

I know I\'ll sound like a grouse, but the fact is that many trainers that have had the \"Move Up\" prefix added to their titles did well yesterday, and I\'m unhappy about that: Dutrow won 2; Frankel, a win & a second; Pletcher a win (Magna Graduate), a second and a third. And yet Bill Mott, whom I have yet to hear rumblings of larceny about & has been on fire this meet, went totally bust yesterday. Glad at least Shug got one, and Wayne. Keeps my faith a little bit.

Two things about your post:

1) Thank\'s to you for bringing this up. Months ago I posted here about the bogus figures of High Limit, only to be heckled and ridiculed for claiming TG screwed up his figures beyond belief.

2) There\'s no point asking about this, because all Brown will say is that his figures for High Limit, especially the LA Derby, are \"in line with the rest of the day\", and therefore, \"right\" (as if a whole day\'s assessment can never be screwed up either).

Given how High Limit hasn\'t won any kind of a race in 7 months now, it\'s further evidence that traditional barometers of evaluating a racehorse\'s ability, like results on the track, are essentially irrelevant to TG (so unable was High Limit to win on the dirt that Frankel did what all trainers before him do when they face that dilemma: throw them on the grass & see if they can win on that surface).

All that matters to TG are their figures they arbitrarily assign (which is crazily exemplified in their BG sheets archive where a horse that ran 10th in the Sprint got a better figure than many of those that crushed him on the track). One thing I learned is that TG rarely ever thinks it\'s figures are wrong or mistaken. In fact, Jerry Brown routinely claims how \"right\" his figures are and how \"wrong\" others (Ragozin, Beyer, etc.) are.

Here\'s a challenge to Thorograph for 2006. If Thorograph figures are so \"right\" and \"accurate\", test them publicly. Every week TG gives the \"Race of the Week\" sheets away for free. Let TG start with a mythical bankroll of whatever amount and make ONE SINGLE WIN BET ONLY on the Race of the Week (after all, if they\'re so \"right\" and \"accurate\" as opposed to others, there should be no need to hedge, right?). Since the information for their \"Race of the Week\" is given away for free anyway, it\'s an ideal vehicle for them to test the quality of their figures in relation to TG\'s usefulness to paying customers. Let\'s see where stands that mythical bankroll come January 2007.



 





 

Jerry:

As long as the gloves are coming off..

The three horses from the LA Derby have managed to find but 1 winner\'s circle in 5 months among them, depsite at least 10 subsequent starts. You wanna keep telling me how great these mules are because your figures say so, then let\'s watch whom we call intellectually dishonest. Last I remember, they payoff at the windows and hand out purse money for what these horses do on the track, not what they do on your sheets.

And speaking of intellectually dishonest, your own shining example of that (among many others) was your Breeders Cup Seminar for 2004. Go back and count the number of times in that seminar you cautioned listeners to weigh in the shipping to Texas and the southern heat as concerns to factor into their wagering, based on your absurd claim that BC horses at Santa Anita the year before suffered from both and ran poorly. Question: was your mug buried so far into your precious sheets that your ignored the fact the the European horses, who travel farther and from cooler climates than anyone else, had their single best showing at a Breeders Cup in 2003 at Santa Anita? So much for heat and travel affecting performance.

None of that pap you spewed would be so sinister but for one thing: YOU CHARGE PEOPLE MONEY FOR THIS DRIVEL! It\'s bad enough if you dispense such nonsense for free, blatantly ignoring the metaphysical evidence right in front of your face. But when you offered that nonsense up in the 2004 Seminar, when anyone watching the Santa Anita Breeders Cup saw what happened with their own eyes, well that\'s more than intellectually dishonest. It\'s borderline larceny. You lose any claim you have to \"expertise\", and it makes it fair game to challenge your analysis on anything else. Especially to those of us that paid.


And I\'ll say this when you\'re in town, out of town, to your face or anywhere else. I should have expected this from someone who didn\'t know anything about photo finish processing until 2005 (tell me again who it is that needs to \"learn something\"). And by the way, I worked right next to one of your \"trackmen\" everyday for years while he compiled your \"data\". I\'ll say this, I sure hope you have them now gathering more info, in a much more sophisticated way, than what this guy was sending in to you. If not, it\'s unconscionable for you to charge money for anything.

And...so what? Thorograph has (rightly) been one of the biggest critic\'s of the \"Move-up\" trainers in the last decade, and of Dutrow in particular. Dutrow himself this spring told one of the Industry Trade Magazines that Sis City was as good as she was in Florida this winter because her vet was none other than Steve Allday, claiming that Allday was a great vet for resolving \"hind end\" problems like she had. Uh-huh.

So why marvel at Saint Liam\'s figures at all? If Saint Liam is being enhanced by a vet in shady ways, his figures are meaningless as a tool to assess ability.

By the way, for all the flack I took on this board from people about my claim that the Lousiana Derby was an over-rated bogus race, I\'ll smugly point out that the first three home out of that race ran this weekend at Saratoga. None of them ran in the money, and for all I know they might all still be trying to finish their races even as I write this.

Louisiana Derby 2005 = Terrible Race with Bad Horses that got Bogus Figures, and they prove it even now, five months later, as they continue to run up the track every time they do run.

All the great efforts in the big races Pat put up over 30 years will probably be argued over as \"his best ride\". But there was one effort that among ractrack regulars in the midwest that stands out even today.

The best Pat Day ride I saw was at Churchill Downs on a cheap claimer named Excelso, trained by Greg Foley. Excelso was a horse that had NEVER won beyond 7 furlongs in a long claiming career. Ever. Anytime this gem of consistency was put in a race farther than 7/8, bettors everywhere licked their chops because he\'d take money and we all knew he\'d never stay the trip. Until Pat got on him.

It was the quintessential effort that underscored Day\'s moniker around the track of \"Baby Hands\". Excelso won that claiming race that day going 1 & 1/16 miles at Churchill, and to this day, Excelso has no idea he ran that far. The big races can showcase how a rider does his stuff under pressure. These type of claimers show what they can do when they have nothing to lose. Many that saw it will swear by the fact thet Pat was the ONLY guy who could have coaxed a two-turn win out of Excelso.

He was a class act. I had the privilege to interview him before, and he was always gracious with his time tho those of us that needed it for the jobs we had to do. May he have a great life wherever he chooses to go.

And this is my last one on this topic...

I made clear my point from that start was High Limit\'s \"1\"\'s are bogus, especially the LA derby. That race this year was a poor group of racehorses, as evidenced by the fact that most or all of them have done little to nothing on the track in the four months since. Also, High Limit himself after the LA Derby has run pathetically, especially his last three, and has rung up four straight losses. I guess my thought was: blame the figure as erroneous, not the horse.

Moreover, like I said before, if you question the Bluegrass figs, that\'s tantamount to acknowledging the LA Derby figure is real suspect, since it was posted clearly here that the Bluegrass figs were based on High Limit repeating his \"1\" in the LA Derby. So how can you question one and not the other?

You\'re right about this: I know speed figures of any kind are determined a lot more subjectively than most admit. This discussion thread, with everybody weighing in as they have proves that beyond doubt. As such, the conclusions are fallible, i.e., any horse\'s given figure can be WRONG! Which, not so incidentally, has been my point all along. So I\'ll reiterate it, AGAIN:

High Limit is not as fast as TG sheets say he is. His fast race figures are wrong, and his efforts after Lousiana prove that: Couldn\'t find him with TWO pairs of binoculars at Churchill; off the board again at Pimlico; and that ugly and awful third place finish yesterday (passed in teh stretch by a horse that ran the day before, by the way). If this is the wotk of a horse firing figures of \"1\", then \"1\" doesn\'t mean what it used to, does it?

Then again, maybe Frankel\'s medical magic has just worn off.

Yeah..I know. That\'s what I said. That\'s why a \"1\" is a 1 for anyone that runs it. Using that standard, what\'s your pooint?