Eight Belles memorial today...

[sighthound]

That at least makes sense.  Although the number of starts for her age, and a 165lb ex rider is in favor of bone soundness.  You know bearing I/O can occur due to subtle injury, or simply be muscle exhaustion (although some horse are simply one-sided, etc).

So tell me guys - how many of you here that own horses, if the same thing happened to one of your horses - how many of you would be willing to spend $800 - $1200 to try and make sure there wasn\'t a subtle problem?  Not many are.

Especially if the horse cooled out fine, recovered fine, your vet went over the horse and couldn\'t find anything, it returned to galloping with vigor, and the regular rider felt nothing wrong?

I think as we get more sophisticated diagnostic capabilities close to/at the track (Ruffian Center, facilities in CA, etc) so horses don\'t have to ship, the use will go up, and the price will go down.

[miff]

JB,

You forgot to reprise your thoughts on Big Brown. As I recall, he had either one or two races left in him after the Fla Derby and he was/is notorious for not running straight. What happened? No implosion, no breakdown, no nuthin!

Re Eight Belles, Dr.Bramlege(sp?),THE EXPERT, commented that he had never seen a breakdown like that and had NO explantion as to the cause for the simultaneous multi leg fractures.

It\'s beyond chutzpah that you think you know when something bad is going to happen to a runner from looking at spacing, fast figs or whatever.Guys in the racing Hall of Fame who are around these animals 60 hours week, sense nothing wrong, don\'t have a clue of impending disaster, but you do.Wow!!


Mike

[Jacimo]

miff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> JB,
>
> You forgot to reprise your thoughts on Big Brown.
> As I recall, he had either one or two races left
> in him after the Fla Derby and he was/is notorious
> for not running straight. What happened? No
> implosion, no breakdown, no nuthin!
>
> Re Eight Belles, Dr.Bramlege(sp?),THE EXPERT,
> commented that he had never seen a breakdown like
> that and had NO explantion as to the cause for the
> simultaneous multi leg fractures.
>
> It\'s beyond chutzpah that you think you know when
> something bad is going to happen to a runner from
> looking at spacing, fast figs or whatever.Guys in
> the racing Hall of Fame who are around these
> animals 60 hours week, sense nothing wrong, don\'t
> have a clue of impending disaster, but you
> do.Wow!!
>
>
> Mike

Miff/Mike

One of the posters I thoroughly enjoy reading here is \"Chuck the Clown\". I haven\'t read anything from him in awhile and read rumor he may not be able to post due to a prediction that \"Denis of Cork\" was unsound and would not race again after the Belmont Stakes. That horse did come down with a post Belmont infirmity and may not race again, although I\'ve read the stable is hoping they can get him back next year.

Is there a penalty for predicting a horse will go bad if the horse runs on? What about Chuck the Clown\'s prediction? Or is such a thing off limits regardless of the outcome?

[BitPlayer]

Jacimo -

Here\'s Chuckles\' prediction:

http://www.thorograph.com/phorum/read.php?1,43554,43661#msg-43661

and TGJB\'s response:

http://www.thorograph.com/phorum/read.php?1,43554,43691#msg-43691

[richiebee]

Delta Lover:

Kip Deville\'s \"all empty\" Woodbine effort did not go totally unnoticed:

richiebee Wrote: (9/7/08)
-------------------------------------------------------
 
> On a tangentially related matter, Kip Deville 5th
> at 50 cents on the dollar
> in the Woodbine Mile today.
>
> On another tangentially related matter, looking
> forward to betting against the
> Big Brown pile of hype at Monmouth Saturday. I am
> looking for the public to buy
> into this overrated animal and believe he will
> struggle running without the
> benefit of steroids against decent older graded
> turf runners.

I made a comment. I am watching the usual suspects. I buried the comment
in a post about a different subject...and I can not wait to see if the Club
Kulina/IEAH unholy alliance will be able to (or willing to) put together a decent
field of turfers to face the Big Brown cold turkey.

[TGJB]

Miff-- and yet, somehow, even without having their experience, I saw trouble coming with Eight Belles. To the point where I sent an email in MARCH trying to head it off. I\'m not giving details because I\'m not looking to embarrass anybody.

You\'ve been using our stuff for a long time. Do you remember my comments about Go For Wand before that BC? Very similar to what I said in the Derby Seminar about EB.

On BB-- before the Derby, I said the over/under was 2 more starts. That means the average result, not the limit. I\'m not claiming to be able to predict what day a horse will break down (and certainly don\'t root for them to, which is what got CTC barred. I used EB in the Derby). But after you\'ve been around a while, using the data and your common sense, and have dealt with a lot of trainers and horses, you get an idea of the percentages. It didn\'t have to be in the Derby-- but EB was an accident waiting to happen.

Once they dodged the big bullet with BB in the TC-- which ironically may have been helped by him not extending himself in the Belmont-- his connections had the chance to space his races. Which the connections of EB did not do.

[miff]

JB,

Respectfully,with a national breakdown rate of app 2 per 1000 runners, it is probably nothing more than longshot coincidence. To think that anyone could pinpoint even a \"possible\" impending problem, from looking at performance data and not being around the horse daily, is way over the top, imo.

You are also dismissing that highly trained and experienced veterinary people are fairly constantly treating/caring for most of these high class horses who would \"present\" trouble no? The advancements in scanning etc, you already know and understand I am certain.


Mike

[sighthound]

>>Miff-- and yet, somehow, even without having their experience, I saw trouble coming with Eight Belles. To the point where I sent an email in MARCH trying to head it off. I\'m not giving details because I\'m not looking to embarrass anybody.


I\'ll ask Larry why he didn\'t listen to you this week.

[TGJB]

Sight-- that\'s not who I sent it to. It was someone in Kentucky who had a vested ineterest in the situation and credibility enough to be listened to, but was not directly connected to the horse. Don\'t know if they passed it on, and that\'s as far as I\'m going.

[mlnolan00]

Jerry may I ask what specifically in her pattern worried you?  Running very fast in a short amount of time without significant rest?  Maybe I can use the same sort of insight with our own horses...

Thanks.

[TGJB]

Miff-- an owner I worked with used to call certain injuries light bulbs-- they\'re okay until they\'re not, then they\'re completely shot.

a) you can\'t always find the problem, even when it\'s clear something is wrong by the way a horse is performing. I\'ve been down that road a lot. A Hall of Fame trainer I worked with once said, \"I\'m going to run him back fast to make him SHOW me what\'s wrong. That way we can deal with it\".

The new scans help a lot. But they cost money,and not everyone believes in them. There are some Old School guys out there.

b) As you well know, trainers often push horses even when there\'s a problem. This is especially true when you are talking about making the Derby. Let me know the next time a trainer says to the press, \"He had a problem, but we ran him anyway\".
Or a vet tells the press \"He broke down because he was overraced\".

c) A few years ago someone posted a study on this site showing strong correlation between furlongs worked and raced over a calendar period with chance of a  breakdown. If anyone can find it, I would appreciate it.

d) yeah, I hit a couple of 500-1 shots.

[TGJB]

In the Derby EB was making her 10th start since September. Off the top of my head I think only a couple of others in the race were even making their 7th or 8th.

She was also running at an unbelievably high level-- the faster they run the more stress they put on themselves, which is why I try to give horses extra time off big efforts. Keeping in mind that fillies average 3 points slower than colts, she had run an incredibly stressful string of races in a short period. And she bore in badly near the wire in her last start before the Derby-- watch the head-on of Dominguez pulling her head at almost a right angle to keep her off the other filly.

Afterwards I went back to check a couple of previous years\' Derbies. Lawyer Ron was making his 10th start since September, and he also went bad in the race, but not fatally-- he came back pretty good. Two Kaplan horses also had run that much and survived, but they weren\'t running nearly as fast.