Belmont Stakes 1992-2002

[nicely nicely]

Sheets for the Belmont Stakes from 1992-2002 are now available in the ARCHIVE section.

http://www.thorograph.com/archive/index.php?utid=phorum

[derby1592]

Thanks for posting the past Belmont sheets.

Taking a quick look it appears as though Funny Cide has a pretty good shot to pair up his last and probably the worst he will run is around a \"0\" with minimal ground loss (unless he draws a very bad post). That means someone will likely have to run a negative figure to beat him. That seems very unlikely for all but Empire Maker and who knows if he will even make it to the starting gate.

This could turn out to be a lot of fun.

Cheers.

Chris

[tucker]

Chris,
While I too think Funny Cide has a great shot to win the Belmont, last year you posted a really good piece about horses that make big jumps in the Belmont.  I will quote from your post last year.

Re: the Derby you said \"In the recent past, horses fast enough to have a chance to win rarely made a big jump in the Derby itself...most of the contenders paired up.  However, In the Belmont jump ups appear to be more common.\"  
\"Here are 4 recent winners that jumped 1.5 pts or more: Point Given (3pts)  Commendable (4.5pts) Lemon Drop Kid (1.5pts) and Editors Note (3pts).\"
\"I looked for some trends among those that jumped up and there were a few but the one constant was a \"classic\" strong pattern (i.e., pair ups and/or small forward moves).\"
You also made a case for some recent top three finishers that \"jumped up.\"  
Funny Cide does have the classic pattern although it seems to be faster than most (the exception being Point Given)of the past classic patterns.  It will be interesting to see which horses may have that chance to \"jump up in the Belmont.\"  Last year you thought that Ess. of Dubai was one of the prototypical jump up horses, however, upon further relflection Sarava also seemed to fit the pattern. I thought his races were too close together to produce a big jump, but with the odds being 70-1 one could have taken a flyer(I unfortunately did not). It will be interesting to see the final entries and apply the \"Belmont Jump\" priciple to see if there is a long shot winner or a horse at long odds that fits this pattern for the exotics.

Sam

[derby1592]

Sam,

Thanks for the kinds words.

I agree completely with your last sentence. I think the key to a decent payoff in the Belmont is to find this year\'s \"jump up\" horse and key him with Funny Cide in the Gimmicks. I don\'t see much value in the race if you cannot find such a horse. If you can get past EM, ATS, Dyn and TMW and find some other horse that looks like a good jump candidate, you should get very long odds and the horse will not even have to beat Funny Cide to provide a nice payoff. If I cannot find such a horse, I will probably just pass the race and cheer for Funny Cide.

We will have to see who actually enters but I think there might be a couple of decent possibilities. If so, this race will look a lot like the Preakness in terms of betting. A live longshot (Midway Road) a solid favorite (Funny Cide) and a vulnerable co-favorite (Peace Rules) That one worked out pretty well for me. However, I have more respect for EM than I did for PR (I am not sure I could call EM vulnerable) and I still have to find the live longshot for the Belmont so I will have to do some more work and hope for some more luck before I can claim my own personal wagering \"Triple Crown\" this year.  

Good luck.

Chris

P.S. If you saw the \"Golden Preakness Pattern\" post about a week ago, 3 of the 4 horses with the \"golden pattern\" that went on to the Belmont after forward moves in the Preakness either improved or paired-up in the Belmont (Real Quiet, Free House and Tabasco Cat). Only Charismatic regressed and that was only 1.75 pts despite breaking down at the finish line and he definitely had the \"ugliest\" line of the 4 in terms of the big jump prior to the Derby and the tremendous number of races at 3 prior to the Belmont. I think this definitely bodes well for Funny Cide\'s chances of racing into the record books.

[Jersey City Jake]

So what\'s your read on Best Minister?  

Sarava lite?

[Dudley]

JB-

Reviewing the past Belmont Graphs I wondered;
Given the lack of 12f races on dirt in the USA, and only one for 3yos, how do you go about making your figures in terms of using pars, comparative times, etc. Is there some amount of guess-work involved in  your fig-making for 12f given that? Thanks.

[TGJB]

I don\'t tie one and two turn races together, so pars are not an issue here, and there are very few 2 turn dirt races at Belmont. You make the figures off the horses in the race itself (you might get some help from the surrounding days if they ran 2 turns, but that would just be an indication), but the good news is that horses who run that far usually have a significant figure history, distance horses are pretty consistent, and stake horses especially so.

To show you what I mean, go back and look at the sheets for the Derby and Preakness horses, still available on this site, and look at them as one race cards-- as if they were the only race on the day. You will see that adding or subtracting doesn\'t work-- the variant is solid, without any help from other races.

The killer ain\'t the Belmont-- it\'s the rained off grass marathon with 5 horses without solid dirt form, only 2 turn race of the day. I do a lot of cursing when that happens.