Rachel Time To Answer The Question!

[Silver Charm]

Nt

[miff]

Ahem, as stated several months ago, put a fork in this years common Rachel!

[Silver Charm]

This was Grade One common. Agreed!

The FREAK of last year is GONE.....

Should be a lesson to those who always say wait until they come back next year. Will be even bigger stronger faster.

[jbelfior]

Team Rachel: 2 mistakes.....1) not stalking Life at Ten and 2) not taking the advice of those on this board who do not  live, breathe, and drink numbers to retire  her after the Monmouth race.


Good Luck,
Joe B.

[Silver Charm]

Right now there TWO diverse camps on Facebook regarding Rachel. Her fans who say they still love her. And the Zenyatta fans who its obvious are still SUPER bitter about last yrs HOY Vote!

Comments are being made in the context that the Personal Ensign result means the voters got it wrong a year ago. Huh!!!

As it is Rachel has 2 Wins and 3 seconds in 5 starts. Nice but nowhere near great. That\'s why its always good to enjoy it while its there......

[miff]

Rachel was just run down by a professional rat in a last quarter of 27 seconds. Should be embarrassing for the connections her but they\'ll spin that she ran\"well\"

[Silver Charm]

Miff its simple \"she bounced\" off that big effort in the Ladys Secret!!

BTW-people are bitching about the Beyers she is getting too...like I said the Z Fans are angry....

[miff]

\"Miff its simple \"she bounced\" off that big effort in the Ladys Secret\"

Silver,

Only a Kool Aid drinker will think she bounced. She\'s lost quite a few steps this year and is no longer a top horse.It now seems reasonable to conclude that the cumulative affect of last year\'s grueling campaign just took too much out of her for her to come back as a brilliant horse this year.


Mike

[smalltimer]

I\'m a Z fan and I\'m not angry about it.  Rachel did plenty last year to deserve HOY honors.  Zenyatta did enough last year to merit HOY honors, but Rachel had a huge year and was a deserving recepient. Still, I believe Zenyatta would have beaten her in \'09 and also this year.
Rachel had a great run, she\'s still a very nice racehorse who has lost enough to be beaten 3 times this year.  Sadly, we\'re never gonna see her at her best again and that\'s what it would have taken to step into the starting gate for the BC Classic.
I\'m glad she\'s been able to campaign without getting hurt.  Fan or no fan, she gave 100% of everything she had this year each time the gate opened.  She just isn\'t the same caliber as she was.  
I\'ve always felt 10 furlongs is outside her range against good animals and I don\'t intend to change my view on that.  But, she can still really run 8.5 or 9 furlongs.
I don\'t know what the Rachel camp thinks about the rest of the year, but she likely gets embarrassed if she is in the Classic against much better than she\'s ever faced.  I also don\'t think the Distaff is a easy spot either.
Just my opinion.

[martoon]

Miff..

Do you really think last year knocked her out?  I tend to think and I\'ve stated here before that i think they took the wrong approach to her offseason and let her put on hundreds of pounds of the wrong kind of weight by hot-housing her in a stall for 6 months instead of turning her out on a farm somewhere.  The great Rachel was lightly made sinewy almost skinny strong.  This year she\'s just a heavy legged looking horse.

[miff]

Martoon,

Yes, definitely. She had too many gut wrenchers last year, against the boys, etc.I honestly don\'t buy that this years bigger Rachel is a negative. I have seen 4 yr old filly\'s/5 year old mares get real powerful/bulked up with maturity.

If the connections don\'t retire a filly whose brilliance at 3 made her comparable to the great Ruffian, they should be shot. It\'s only about their ego\'s now if they race her.She\'ll probably get embarrassed by the top runners now, especially Zenyatta, a mare I believe she would have dismissed with impunity LAST year.


Mike

[martoon]

She had a very distinctive way of moving last year, almost springy kicking out those back legs like a rabbit, and that was what made her so brilliant i thought.  She was built like Scotty Pippen and came back this year looking like Shaquille Oneil.  Even Zenyatta stayed in light training and light breezes during her break but Rachel just walked the shed from what I heard.  Personally I\'d put her on a diet and try to get her old body back but it\'s too late for that with these guys.  She still has heart to run up front and she must be sound as she\'s breezed about 30 times this year without missing one so I\'m not sure I agree with the whole knockout factor from last year myself...  Isn\'t 7 months long enough to recover from any exhausting efforts unless there\'s something structurally wrong?

[Silver Charm]

Great Points Martoon. And assuming on that last one you are accurate why is she still running?

[miff]

Martoon,

Asmussen is a  top trainer, if he could not get her back to last year, I have to believe that she was a one year wonder, her best at 3.Like many athletes, that was her career year, she has fallen pretty far from that this year being run down from behind by a couple of average type horses.Yesterday was the coup de grace being run down by a slow, one pace common slugette, Persistently,now a Grade 1 winner on paper, a joke!

Mike

[jbelfior]

Mike:

We talked about her after the Monmouth race.

Sometimes I think it\'s better to be a gambler in this game than a handicapper. I mentioned to a friend that I did not think there was a snowball\'s chance in hell that RA could get a 1 1/4 at Saratoga, especially in light of what I was thinking....that she was not the RA of 2009. Saratoga is one of the most demanding tracks at that distance (see Fly Down closing into conveyor belt speed bias on Saturday and RA has not been the same since her wire job last year at 1 1/8th).  

A Life at Ten/RA exacta was not worth the time or the risk and how in the world does anyone come up with anyone else here. So I pass the race thinking it would be a 4-2 exacta.


He wheels the field on top of Rachel and cashes for $940.



.....and that\'s why I have to work!!!!



Good Luck,
Joe B.