BC Sprint - My View

[Mall]

The exact words of an ex-trainer who watched & studied his races & his only daylight workout, where he pulled up as soon as he hit the finish line, something which Amoss also saw as a negative. And this was coming from someone whose opinion I have relied on successfully on many occasions, as he has talked me off of great number/pattern horses which had cracked hooves, were out of shape, were \"gutted\" from their last race,etc. The fact that Lukas did all but one work in the dark & then simply reported the times to the CD Clockers didn\'t make sense, as Orientate figured to be a very short price & why would he conceal the works to bump the price from 7/5 to 8/5? However, the rumors that the horse had a problem in his left front was communicated to me by one of the few drf handicappers\' opinions I respect, & one member of our syndicate who was also in Chicago said that the rumors had taken on a life of their own. Then there was the fact that the horse was coming in off the longest layoff of any horse that Lukas ever started in a BC race, & he has a long history of trying to squeeze one more race out of a horse which is, as the pattern experts say, over the top. The case I made against the horse had nothing to do with the pattern, as it appeared to me that he  would win if he ran his race, & could be seen as an overlay at the final odds.  As it turned out, Orientate ended up going off at 5/2 in a US pool of approx $4.1 million & as high as 7-1 with Euro bookmakers, & I\'m left wondering if the allegedly financially strapped DWayne made a score which rivals the one made by Mr Single from Baltimore without breaking any laws & busted our pk6 tix in the process.

[JimP]

I wish I could have gotten those 7-1 Euro odds. I was happy with the 5/2. I didn\'t have access to the inside information about lameness. I saw the 3 fast races in a row in a short period of time. That seemed to prove that he could run fast without bouncing on short rest. The longer rest into the BC looked to me like a way to further reduce the likelihood of a bounce this time. Many past winners of the BC Sprint have come in with 6 weeks or more of rest. And even a little regression from those prior figures looked like it might be good enough to win. Assuming he didn\'t lose too much ground from the outside post. I concluded that with his running style he might not lose to much. Why was this not an appropriate way to read the pattern? I know he won. That\'s not the point of my question. I\'m trying to understand why the same logic couldn\'t be used effectively in the future. Is there any historical data that indicates this to be a flawed approach?

[derby1592]

Jim,

If you ignored (or did not hear) the rumors about Orientate and downplayed the layoff and lack of works (both unusual for Lukas) and the history of the trainer, and assumed that Orientate was 100 percent healthy, then he was clearly the most likely winner.

Since switching to dirt sprints, he had been consistently faster than any sprinter ever and he had demonstrated the ability to handle the expected hot pace and still run his number. The other front-runners in the race had either shown they could not handle the expected pace or had never seen such a pace. Xtra Heat, Bonapaw and several others had shown they could not handle the expected pace. Carson Hollow and Thunderello were wild cards since they had never seen the expected pace and they both were still developing.

Xtra Heat and Bonapaw both failed to fire under the pace pressure (although Bonapaw had a rough start), Carson Hollow folded and Thunderello showed he has a big upside (I am hoping that they freeze some blood samples).

Still, given the 3 big recent efforts and the layoff (normally good for BC sprinters but unusual for Lukas) and the lack of works after his most recent race along with all the rumors and the fact that he was the likely favorite, you could also build a strong case that Orientate was not healthy and a toss.

As I said before the race in discussions with others, it would not have surprised me to have seen Orientate win the race or to have seen him break down or to have seen him win the race and then break down.

Chris

[Mall]

I was told by a breeder before the race that Xtra Heat had her winter coat & would probably not run her race for that reason, though why that would be true on a day like Sat is not clear to me. She looked the same to me, though my lack of skill in this area is such that it is not 100% certain I would have picked up on the fact if she was wearing mittens. I\'ve also been told on a number of occasions that fillies or mares were \"horsing\", which I understood to mean were in heat. I do not remember a single instance where such a horse won, which is one among many reasons one might conclude that the nos, while important, do not always tell the entire story.

[JimP]

Chris wrote:
\'If you ignored (or did not hear) the rumors about Orientate and downplayed the layoff and lack of works (both unusual for Lukas) and the history of the trainer, and assumed that Orientate was 100 percent healthy, then he was clearly the most likely winner.\'

I usually pay attention to rumors only if I think they\'re coming from a very reliable source. I had no way of knowing in this case. It was all just unsubstantiated stuff to me. Leading up to a major event like the BC there is always a bunch of wild rumors flying. And while the absence of listed works is a red flag, I don\'t usually discard a horse on that basis unless I know something (injury, etc.) Too many trainers hide (some intentionally and some by chance)their workouts in various ways, that I just don\'t put much stock in that any more. And Orientate did show three decent works since his last race. More would have been encouraging to me, but I couldn\'t discard him on that basis. And I actually considered the layoff to be positive coming into the race. My fear back in September was that Lukas was going to keep running the horse every three weeks and burn him out before the BC. So when he backed him off for a breather, I was positively impressed. Maybe I got lucky in reading the pattern this way. Maybe the horse really is lame and will never run again. Maybe we\'ll never see another horse put together 4 sprint numbers like these with that kind of spacing. I guess I\'ll be watching for that down the road and see what happens. I don\'t have access to any historical data that I can check the premise against.

[Mall]

My earlier post was not specific on this question, but the ex-trainer, who has a close relationship with the CD clockers, & later a young rotund gentleman who is in the process of becoming a CD clocker, told me independent of one another that the 1st two workouts occurred this way. The Clockers arrive at, say, 5 am. At 5:05, they receive a call from DWayne & he says Orienate already worked & that he caught him in X & change. X & change is what appeared in the drf for 2 works in the dark that nobody actually saw. The only daylight work & the only work anyone actually saw was the last one before the race, & that\'s the one Tom Amoss viewed as negative because of the way he pulled up at the finish line.