Belmont Day Post Mortemization

[TGJB]

I wouldn\'t go as far as brilliant, but overall I thought it was pretty good. Right church, wrong pew.

[smalltimer]

JB,
I ran 2-3-4-5 in the race and threw Brown out of everything, and I wouldn\'t call my play brilliant.  lol

[covelj70]

JR,

This isn\'t true.  Vegas offered a short Big Brown bet.

[TGJB]

Analysis and play are two different things, and I didn\'t say brilliant.

Random events happen all the time in this game. The key part of the analysis was taking a position against BB, and if you and I (and MJ) get to make those plays 100 times, we make an awful lot of money. The problem was we caught one of the random events not attached to the primary analysis-- a joker jumped out of the deck.

The other problem, of course, is you don\'t get 100 shots at 1-5 shots making their third start in 5 weeks off what amounts to an 0-2 (top followed by a backward move), with the top a killer effort.

[Ian Meyers]

Even when you\'re right you can be wrong.  I was convinced BB\'s feet were killing him , but couldn\'t find Da\'Tara (completely whiffed on that lone speed thing) and ended up 2-3-4-5.  I was screwed when Casino Drive scratched because that horse has been lame for 2 weeks.

I heard that Mall like the winner but I don\'t know if he ended up playing him.

[TreadHead]

This is really the only way I can rationalize what happened yesterday.  Take a look at the figures run in their LAST race only (which obviously is a very short-sighted way to use the figures under normal conditions).

Macho Again 2.5
Denis of Cork 2.5
Da\'Tara 3.5
Tale of Ekati 3.0
Anak Nakal 4.0
Ready\'s Echo 2.5
Icabad Crane 3.25

Now give Da\'Tara the lead and the rail the whole way around and throw in the fact that really none of the pedigrees in this race were outwardly screaming for 12 furlongs (as is the case with 99% of north american runners) which might cause a figure improvement if they were... discounting Da\'Tara doesn\'t seem like such a great thing to do under that light.  I\'m going to guess DoC and Da\'Tara get somewhat similar figs after DoC being somewhat wide on each turn.

I\'m probably reaching quite a bit here, and should probably just learn to let races like this go, but like many others, I was so ready to cash that super with the horses that finished 2-3-4-5.

[TGJB]

Sounds like the guys on this board would have had half the super pool if DT didn\'t run. I had figured I would have made 150-200k on a $1,600 bet, I\'ll have to revise my estimates down.

[dpatent]

Well I was clearly wrong about Big Brown.  The bigger problem for me yesterday was being wrong in the other races I bet, since I only bet $168 on the Belmont and did not have BB on any of those tickets anyway -- I missed the Da\'Tara bandwagon too, unfortunately.

Good call on BB, Jerry.  Every race is a learning experience and I have some good additional data points for the memory bank.

[TGJB]

\"Data points\" brings back memories.

[JR]

The question is, what did we learn from this race? While pulling a joker from the deck might be a random event, there is still a frequency associated with it. For some reason, Da Tara outran not just a 1-4 shot, but a whole group of horses who each had a better reason to run faster than Da Tara and didn\'t. Why?

[JR]

I wish I\'d known.

[JR]

If DT had run his race the payouts would have been disappointing. Correctly toss a 1-4 shot and end up with just your hands in your pockets. Big bummer.

[Boscar Obarra]

JR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And if you bet it \"objectively\" it\'s time to take
> out the trash. Sorry but this time JB can only
> take credit for choosing the loser and they don\'t
> offer that bet.

 Really? The boys at betfair would disagree, and any professional player knows exactly how to do it at the windows.

 As I said in another post, bashing a heavy fave to bounce to the moon and picking the winner are two different calculations.  

  As for how this could happen (a supposedly slow horse) winning at huge odds.  It happens often enough.  He was coming to the race off a pair up. Always a potential threat.  And its Zito, who performs minor miracles in big races.

  It not always about the figures, you have to take a more \'cynical\' view at times.  I\'m not claiming to have predicted anything, just that the result is WELL within the bounds of normalcy, or what passes for it at the track.

[JR]

I don\'t consider miracles, even minor ones, within the bounds of normal events.

[fkach]

>Big Brown was anointed as one of Racing\'s greats without having to face
adversity. When adversity presented itself (Heat? A deeper track than BB may
have liked? Desormeaux yanking on the reins early in the race?)BB proved to be
merely mortal and then some.<

Richie,

The problem is that even though he was steadied, a bit rank early, bumped, it was very hot, etc... it\'s not like he finished a close 2nd or 3rd. If he had, there would be questions about the ride, trip, conditions, or his ability to overcome adversity.  He would then fall into the category of horses that lost their bid for the Crown because they got a bad trip, moved prematurely etc... However, BB was done after about 6F. He pretty much didn\'t lift a hoof.
 
I have no idea what R Dutrow really thought about this horse\'s chances going in, but in hindsight I suspect that if he was worried and knew the horse was a bit short, he wasn\'t going to say that publicly if he intended to run.  If something bad happened after he said there was still an issue, it would have been a total public relations disaster for him and the sport.
 
The thing is, high quality horses don\'t run this poorly unless there is something physically wrong with them.  
 
IMHO, pending new information we are going to have to presume that the cracked quarter and missed training leading up to the Belmont was the cause of his poor effort.
 
This horse has had chronic hoof problems even when he was just in training. That\'s why he was so lightly raced to begin with. We all knew going in the probabilities of a recurrence of that problem were much higher than usual regardless of his performances on the track. The fact that he actually had a cracked hoof and missed some days of training screamed that the risk of a poor effort were much higher than the PPs alone suggested.
 
I\'ve been about as positive on this horse as anyone here, but I gave him only 50% instead of 75% because of that one factor alone. Plus, I still haven\'t seen anyone provide any stats that suggest I overestimated the risk. If anything, I conceded that I was probably underestimating it out of ignorance.  
 
I am still having a tough time thinking of any top notch horses that missed some training just prior to an important stakes race that went on to win. However, I can think of several that ran sub par. About the closest thing I can think of was Invasor in the BC a couple of years ago. He missed an important prep. However, K.M. had a lot more time to get him right for the BC than Dutrow had to get BB right for the Belmont.  

Pending new info, I think that\'s the lesson of the Belmont. Horses that get sick, have minor physical ailments, etc.. that are bad enough to keep them out of training for awhile just prior to a major race, but not bad enough to miss the race are a very huge risk - especially as the favorite.

When all was said and done, I think the Japanese connections came out of this looking really good. They resisted the temptation to run after traveling thousands of miles, attended the race, said some kinds things about BB, and wished BB all the best despite some of the comments hurled their way by Dutrow leading up to the race. Class act!