The Jerry Brown Strategy

[HP]

I was all over High Limit at 23-1 and I\'ll admit it and I\'d make that bet any day of the week including tmw.  I thought he could save ground, I figured Dominguez/Frankel would know they should let the .45 half horses do their .45 half thing and wait and I thought he had less of a chance to back up than the big blowout four negative # horses.

HP

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

I wound up working High limit into my bets late, less on bounce, more on track. He had paired 1\'s and was logical. You never know, as slow as they went but for the trouble he may have been you\'re winner. He did seem to be rating more at the time he was injured. Tough race in a tough game. If he wins though, I\'m still beat...lol

I made High Limit 25-1 in the Derby. That was only out of respect for Frankel. If it was anyone else I would have made him 50-1. If you told me beforehand what the pace and race development was going to be, I would have made him 50-1 even with Frankel. I thought this race development was a decent probability, but it\'s never certain.

[jbelfior]

CH has a good pace point regarding HIGH LIMIT. I thought he wasn\'t fit for the BG and gave him the benefit of the (pace) doubt....WRONG AGAIN, Joe.

CH---you were right on the $ with your assessment of HL. Even with a more reasonable pace, he would have been overrun by BELLAMY,HIGH FLY, and CLOSING ARGUMENT.


Good Luck,
Joe B.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

HIGH LIMIT (Maria\'s Mon) came out of his last-place finish cut up and bleeding after grabbing both hind quarters, and Bobby Frankel initially ruled out the Preakness, saying High Limit would miss two weeks of training and not run for at least a month. However, following a veterinarian exam, Frankel told reporters that the colt was doing better than he expected and High Limit\'s injuries weren\'t bad enough to rule out a shot at the Preakness.

Apparently Noble Causeway and not Sun King nipped him by the chart.

Breeders\' Cup Juvenile (G1) winner WILKO (Awesome Again) bled on Saturday, but that doesn\'t concern trainer Craig Dollase, who said a decision on the Preakness would be made later.

\"He had a little bit of bleeding yesterday and that was a disappointment, but he is in good spirits today, \" Dollase said. \"The little bleeding issue, obviously, it can be fixed, so I fell pretty good about it, especially after seeing the way he came back.

http://www.brisnet.com/cgi-bin/editorial/full_edition.cgi

Hard to say the pace issue was going to do High Limit in. He had rated in the Blugrass and was 3 lengths better than CA despite jumping shadows at a dead rail. He needed a tough race on his light seasoning and he got it in the Bluegrass. Appeared to be rating when injured, we\'ll never know for sure, but that injury sure deprived him of a chance to beat a winner that you have to be skeptical of.



Post Edited (05-09-05 10:05)

HL will have a better chance in the Preakness. The cheap rabbit speeds will probably drop out and the field will be smaller so it\'s less likely to become a hyper competitive race. Plus it will be a 1/16 shorter. I think he should have aimed for the Preakness and given the horse one more race against moderate competition to get more seasoning.



Post Edited (05-09-05 15:11)

[TGJB]

CH-- you have no way of knowing what HL would have done AT THIS POINT if the drug testing issue didn\'t exist, or if he didn\'t get cut up-- all you have is an opinion with no evidence, like you did with Summerly. And you were wrong.

I for one am NOT HAPPY about the news that HL got banged up. Before that it was easy-- if the horses trained by the move up guys were running at Pim I would bet out on him at a big price, if not I wouldn\'t. Now it\'s more complicated. My guess is that the decision to run or not will nominally be made because of the cuts, but really made on another basis.

[jbelfior]

TGJB--

Then there is the other possibility that folks like you and I overrated this guy. I thought for sure he would run giant. I even had a $50 box using him with the winner....talk about a retirement fund.

He\'ll be a 25-1 or better shot at Pimlico, assuming he goes. What to do then???



Good Luck,
Joe B.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

If I\'ve interpreted the following post correctly, you seem pretty confident that  backside security and supertesting has modified Supertrainer conduct.

Is this view based soley upon the results at Churchill from May 1st onward?

TGJB wrote:

> CH-- you have no way of knowing what HL would have done AT THIS
> POINT if the drug testing issue didn\'t exist, or if he didn\'t
> get cut up-- all you have is an opinion with no evidence, like
> you did with Summerly. And you were wrong.
>
> I for one am NOT HAPPY about the news that HL got banged up.
> Before that it was easy-- if the horses trained by the move up
> guys were running at Pim I would bet out on him at a big price,
> if not I wouldn\'t. Now it\'s more complicated. My guess is that
> the decision to run or not will nominally be made because of
> the cuts, but really made on another basis.
>
>

[fasteddie]

Joe B:

The media will insure him going off under 10-1 because of the cuts, and the Frankel factor, and the smaller field. Giacomo is the surest toss-out for the Preakness since Sea Hero; if Bellamy runs, will the public forgive and make him the fav....this may be the best betting Preakness in YEARS!!!

[TGJB]

CTC-- Basically, it comes from talking to a lot of people who are seriously concerned about the problem (Waterman in KY., Ron Charles in Ca., Andy Schweigardt at TOBA, others), and seeing what Hayward and Karches are doing in NY. This is the beginning of the problem being taken seriously, and yes, the evidence (as opposed to proof) to me was the performances of the horses. This is something that has to be watched closely, and it would be a mistake to draw blanket conclusions ONE WAY OR THE OTHER based on one result, because we don\'t know everything that was going on. If it was the plain clothes guys and not the tests that scared people, some horses may be got to and others not-- there was a huge difference, by all accounts, from the level of backstretch security at the 03 and 04 Breedres Cups, for example.

TGJB,

\"CH-- you have no way of knowing what HL would have done AT THIS POINT if the drug testing issue didn\'t exist, or if he didn\'t get cut up-- all you have is an opinion with no evidence, like you did with Summerly. And you were wrong.\"

I doubt I\'m wrong about either.

Beyer, Crist, the general public (who sent him off at over 20-1) and everyone else sensitive to the pace issue either tossed the horse out totally or said beforehand he would be in trouble if the pace was fast. The pace is fast and the race collapses. He finishes last and it was probably all due to drugs or cuts? It couldn\'t be that he was exposed in the BG as a horse that couldn\'t finish well at 9F after trying to rate behind one 3rd string rabbit - let alone battling or getting outrun by a field full of top horses at 10F in a very fast pace.    

Whatever you say.

Regarding Summerly:

I\'m not even sure what the correct figure for Sis City\'s big race actually was. No one else had that race as fast as you did.

I can\'t totally account for Summerly\'s terrible race that day assuming it wasn\'t a particulary fast race for Sis City. I admitted that on a competitor\'s board when the point was raised. All I said was she wasn\'t as good as she looked going into that race and she would lose because Sis City would put her away. She did. I didn\'t expect Sis City to win by 10 or her to lose by 19.

Her win Friday does not mean that I was wrong about her prior races with loose leads in easy paces not being as good as they looked.

I haven\'t seen Summerly\'s figure for this recent win, but I\'d guess it wasn\'t much faster than she had run in her prior fast races (maybe even slower) My own estimate of the race is low to mid 90s on the Beyer scale - which is slower. (keep in mind that Sis City was so dreadful Summerly was even loose for 1/2 mile in this one)

She also didn\'t win nearly as easily or all wrapped up the way she did when she was loose and loafing on the lead earning those mid 90s figures in the past.

So IMHO, her performance Friday did nothing to dispell my opinion that her races earlier in the year where she was winning fast totally under wraps weren\'t as good as they looked.  If she was really so good, she would have beaten this field just as easily given that Runway Model and Sis City were so dreadful. IMO, she ran OK at best and won by default. That\'s pretty much the way I would have expected to run the day I criticized her and expected Sis City to put her away. At this point, she\'s a decent filly, nothing better. Like many speed horses she can look terrific with an easy loose lead.

[MO]

Drug testing or not, I\'ll go on record here saying  that Bellamy Road\'s Wood fried him and you won\'t see him in the winner\'s circle again.

[TGJB]

CH-- As usual, you totally ignore the points, which include that you posted here right after the Ashland that her loss was predictable due to her not being as good as she looked at FG. Now she came back and beat the same fillies she lost to-- is your analysis of the ashland still valid?

Horses run to different levels of ability in different races. That\'s why we put them on graphs, that\'s why we create Thoro-Patterns-- we know it\'s a game of percentages. We know better than to assign hard and fast cause and effect relationship relationships, like you do.

You had several opinions going into the Derby, which included some horses you liked (some of whom were closers behind a fast pace) that did not run well. Does that mean your reasoning on them was wrong? Or is the only test of your reasoning HL?

Focus on my point-- we DON\'T KNOW at this point whether the drug testing stopped HL, although there is some EVIDENCE (not proof) that it was a factor over the two days. IF it was, there is no way to evaluate his performance, since he may have been a different horse than he would otherwise have been-- and a reply of \"I didn\'t like him anyway\" is besides the point.

TGJB,

I understand what you are saying.

Of course it\'s possible that drugs and cuts played a part. Heck, I liked Bandini\'s chances and he\'s still running - without any excuse from me.

I think there is a difference between liking a horse that most agreed would probably run well and watching him run poorly and one that some sharp people totally hated and watching him run poorly - especially if one of the reasons they hated him comes to pass.

In my estimation, it is way more likely that HL didn\'t want 10F in a race loaded with speed than it is that he would have run a big race had it not been for cuts and the \"possibility\" that he ran drug free for the first time this year.

I didn\'t expect him to run that poorly, but I expected him to be up the track.

I think he will run much better at Pimilico because the rabbits will be gone, the field will be smaller, and the distance will be shorter. He will get decent position early and last for as long as he lasts (depending on pace and track conditions).