A Look Back at the Preps

[boardedup]

I\'ve been watching and re watching the last efforts of the Preakness field over and over all morning.  I\'m at an impasse and I\'m hoping someone more astute than myself can explain the Wood #\'s compared to those of the Ark Derby.

Mainly how is it possible that CC went forward 2 points off that (non) effort in the Wood?  He wasn\'t even in the screen at the wire?  Furthermore he was all out under as heavy a whip as I\'ve seen in a long time to continue on and beat True Timber for the show spot?  True Timber isn\'t a top 3 betting choice in the Sir Barton Stakes on today\'s under card.

CC ran in the clear after going 3W the whole entire backstretch, went 3W again on the far turn and continued on under heavy urging \"evenly\" I guess? Zero trouble, to my eye almost zero running?

Compare that effort to that of the top two finishers in the Ark Derby?  CMM broke from 11, was 4 wide the first turn and continued wide battling two others for the lead.  Petrov was backed off while CMM and a bomb continued to engage for the entire first half mile fighting for the lead.  As soon as he overtakes the 80-1 shot, Malagacy comes up on his outside and heads him.  CMM instantly fights back and retakes the lead, they continue to do serious battle into and through the stretch.  I\'d point out that while CMM was bobbing around all over the place, each time was when he and Malagacy bumped into each other.  They banged into one another and CMM veared away from the contact.  This happened twice in the stretch run, likely the difference between winning and losing by a half length at the wire.  CMM was under heavy pressure and running all out the entire way, zero breaks.

The winner CE, had a tough trip himself, but I\'d argue CMM ran the better race.  Either way, they both got the same #, 2 points slower than CC in the Wood? I have a hard time rationalizing this?  Especially when you look at how the Wood form has held up going forward?  What am I missing?  This would seem to be pretty important today, I need some help with this one..

[TGJB]

I left this one alone because it was the equivalent of a guy saying how can you say the Earth is round, I\'m looking out my window and I can see it\'s flat.

More importantly-- I made a point at the time of saying I had decided the track got slower on Wood day. So far a) the Contessa older horse came back and paired his number, b) Lockdown came back and paired her number, and c) CC came back today and probably paired the number, given he was on the wire with a horse with a zero top.

As far as Ragozin goes, I have to give Vito some props. He came up with CC on his own, which is amazing since he was the seventh fastest horse on their stuff. According to his post he didn\'t use CE even knowing he was 2 points faster than they had him, which was probably out of spite and/or pride. The rest of their customers had no shot, they couldn\'t use CE at a short price when they were looking at the sheet of a horse that hadn\'t gotten back to his 2yo top. Since Jake undoubtedly knew about the error and didn\'t fix it, they should give everyone their money back. But they won\'t.

Meanwhile, regarding all this, on the Rag board it\'s crickets.

[boardedup]

CC ran huge today and I was clearly wrong about that.  That aside, my point was that I watched the Wood 20 times the past day and a half and just didn\'t see CC really run, while beaten 7 lengths. He was around a 0 and change and True Timber who he was all out to pass came in around a 3.5.  TT ran inside by a path and CC broke poorly. I literally paused the race with CC hitting the finish line trying to find the published 3.5 lengths these two were stated to be separated by. I was looking for some clarity on this race when comparing it to others. Then TT came up totally empty two races prior to the Preakness.  To date CC is the sole Wood runner to come back and run anywhere close to those numbers, correct?  

At the end of the day I was wrong today.  I was looking for answers before the race and didn\'t get any, it is what it is, not the last time I\'ll be wrong for sure.

[TGJB]

Yeah, exactly. You were going on what you saw, as opposed to using data. Like looking out your window.

I just watched the replay, 3 1/2 is about right.

[BitPlayer]

Boardedup -

I struggled with similar issues regarding those figs.  One of the things I did was translate the Beyer fig to the TG scale using the formula TGJB post long ago:

https://www.thorograph.com/phorum/read.php?1,42221,42269#msg-42269

and then adjust for weight and ground loss to see how it compared with the TG fig.  Beyer has modified his scale in some unspecified way since TGJB\'s post, but the translation still seems to give reasonable results (at least in the small number of races, all Triple-Crown-related, for which I have gone to this much trouble). Sometimes Beyer has a race faster; sometimes Beyer has it slower.

In the case of the races in your post, I think Beyer had the Arkansas Derby faster and the Wood slower.  Taking a wisdom-of-crowds approach, I used a figure somewhere in the middle of Beyer and TG in doing a Monte Carlo simulation of the race.

The outcome was that Cloud Computing looked like a play at his odds, Conquest Mo Money did not.  Of course, after doing all that I tossed Cloud Computing on the win end (I didn\'t think he would want 9.5 furlongs), and included Conquest Mo Money (I thought speed was playing well; why did they not send him?).

As things turned out, Cloud Computing did handle the distance, but Conquest Mo Money did not run all that badly.  Given his ground loss, I think he may have earned the third-best figure in the race, which might have put him in the thick of things with a rail trip.

[jbelfior]

It\'s amazing how he handled it while bearing in and out. CE didn\'t appear to be stopping and it was 5 back to the 3rd horse.

To quote the late, great Johnny Campo (who was referring to himself at the time).... \"I tell ya, that (Chad Brown) is one helluva trainer pal.\"


Good Luck,
Joe B.

[legendbets]

rumor circulating that jock wasn\'t ready when the gates opened, he had just walked into the gate and they were off without him apparently.  not bad when your only job is to make the front end to give your horse the very little chance he had, gotta be careful when lesser jocks ride against big boys

[BitPlayer]

It happens.  Castellano had a similar experience aboard Malagacy in the Arkansas Derby.

[boardedup]

The gates did open pretty quick after he loaded, but you think you\'d be pretty dialed in going into a race like that especially when your mount needs be in it from the jump at all costs?

Poor break- jockey rushed him up to be hung 5W 5W, poor all around really.  He did get a legit number though.  Connections talking about Belmont, not sure how I feel about that?  I wanted to give him another chance next out, especially after seeing that was the fastest he\'s ever run, but can\'t think the Belmont distance on a 3 week turnaround is the ideal spot for him?

If he goes, once again it\'ll be a tough read for me.