Animal Kingdom

[miff]

What a slug, only a moron could like him!


Mike

[mjellish]

Sekrah said:

\"If I were to rank the horses in this field, Animal Kingdom would be dead last.

I don\'t think I\'ve ever seen a U.S. horse with the centuries of turf breeding in EVERY SINGLE LINE of this one\'s pedigree. I\'ll retire from the game if this one pops a new top at Churchill Downs.\"




So how is retirement Sek?

[Silver Charm]

Agreed Sight!! And this is why you run.

[Michael D.]

Absolutely.

Huge win for Barry I and the crew. The thrill of winning this thing with one you raised must be unbelievable.

Great horse, Barry, and a great win.

[sekrah]

I\'m retired mjellish.   When you dismiss the chances of the top 5 finishers, it\'s time to go.  

POF came out with severe bleeding but that\'s neither here nor there. Have fun guys.

[sighthound]

That\'s unfortunate, but explains hitting the brick wall and stopping.

[plasticman]

Congrats Barry, i know you\'re reading this! Way to go.

Also, great job getting JV, that was a tough decision to make, but it was the right one considering the situation.

[Rick B.]

sekrah Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I\'m retired mjellish.   When you dismiss the
> chances of the top 5 finishers, it\'s time to go.

Man, do I ever feel the same way: WTF am I doing, betting on this race?

Recent strange winners (Giacoslow, Find That Turd, now this pure grass cutter) would seem to indicate that I can no longer use performance figures...can\'t use patterns...can\'t use breeding information (huh?) to help isolate the Derby winner...

What then? Become a horse whisperer?

Nonsense. I\'m done with Derby -- at least until it returns to something that can be deciphered with reasonable handicapping methods. Sour grapes? If you say so. I\'m tired of losing my ass on what has become nothing more than a glorified lottery race.

[smithkent]

Reconsider-mjellish you are one of the best posters here and have hit many gems in the past. a big race like this years Derby is sometimes indecipherable.  It\'s not you, it\'s the race.  That said, maybe AK is an exceptional animal that grew up right in front of our eyes-is a Triple Crown possible here?  My first Derby live and it was phenomenal.

[toppled]

I was fed up too after the Derby.  I got killed yesterday & I spent most of the morning away from race related stuff.  Then I realized that I liked some horses at Tampa today and snapped out of it.  I won back 45% of the money I blew yesterday & I\'m feeling a lot better tonight.

Don\'t give up, sekrah.  You\'re too good of a handicapper to let the Derby, which I\'m starting to realize is often a race that most of the time we shouldn\'t be betting any serious money on, get you down.

[FrankD.]

Rick B, Sekrah & all the other retiree\'s,

Its not that bad or is it ? 20 horses going a distance they\'ve never gone before and a distance very few have  been bred for in the past 20 years is a crap shoot. Most of us thought this years crop showed a lot of promise coming in ?

We were wrong, via injury, defection or lack of development it\'s a very pedestrian bunch so why couldn\'t anyone win ? I posted in a string a couple of weeks ago and have said it at least 100 times when asked who I liked that you could make a case for or against any horse in the race. So if your an owner why not take a shot at the most coveted prize in the game ?

The Derby is a lottery, we\'ve over medicated, over bred, let our top sire\'s leave the country and bred for speed at a mile for the past 20 years. Why should we expect the next great horse that everyone seems to want so badly to magically appear from this equation ? We\'ve weakened the breed.

Look at the media coverage ? A girl jockey whose cute rides a horse with a catchy name and a 20/1 shot goes to post at 8/1. Calvin Borel is suddenly a magician and a 50/1 shot is 10/1. Uncle Mo with his impressive 2 year old numbers IMO would never have gotten the distance. I personally was hoping for The Village People to do the MMM song in the winners circle !

At least a horse who was bred to run a classic distance won the race. He came out sound and unlike the past 2 Derby winners I\'m betting he wins quite a few more races before he\'s sent to stud. Yes he\'s a turf horse, he\'s never run on dirt and was not fast enough via any of our methodologies to compete.

It\'s frustrating. Derby week is my favorite betting week of the year, very few customers got called back this past week. I made light of the fact that they should know better than to call me during Derby week, its builds from Tuesday as I do less and less work until Friday and Saturday are strictly gambling days.
My wife actually had the nerve to say that she\'s completely positive that I like the horses more than her ! I\'m sure no one else here has ever encountered similar bliss ? I handicapped my ass off all week and got my butt completely handed to me. If not for a $ 118.00 exacta on Friday of Banned and Close Ally that was crushed it would have been a total and complete train wreck !!!

I\'m happy for Barry Irwin and partners, I\'m happy for my friend who constantly texts me losers cashed a good one, yes the venerable drbillym and I hope AK stays healthy and wins lot\'s of races. I\'ll be digging into the pick 4 at Finger Lakes tomorrow, waiting for Saratoga and will be just as excited next year when Derby week rolls around.

After all were horse players, were supposed to bitch, complain, quit and find religion a few times a year or at least until the next score with 4 zero\'s in it comes our way !

[Stewball]

To Sekra and other retirees-it\'s a strange and beautiful world...I handicapped during the week and won the Oaks Derby double because of advice I got on this board. I won the Derby exacta because I bet the numbers in my birthday....
   I lose more than I win, but I still just love to play. Hindsight is 20/20 and I usually end up thinking, why didn\'t I see that coming? The only rule I really believe in is not to bet anything I am not willing to lose.
   I know ya\'ll will role your eyes and say \"she\'s just an amateur\" this is our business-and that is quite right. But unlike me, ya\'ll are really good at what you do, and I\'m sure you win far more than you lose. I enjoy learning from ya\'ll. But being absolutely right about a 20 horse race is just next to impossible.
   What really made me cringe this weekend was an online betting service which I will not name but you all know- whose \"experts\" decided to go with the favorite all the way. A toss of the coin imo because they really had no other idea, it was so wide open.
   Frank D is right about this one. So, take a break, scale back if you will, regroup and come back in a more sane race like the Preakness ready to have a good time-don\'t give up on something you love so much-Be well!
ps:I changed my name from Girly to Stewball \'cause it\'s my favorite song about a horse. Hope to see you in Saratoga!

[mjellish]

Ah Sek,

I was just teasing.  Can\'t get em every year.  But that\'s about as bad a beat as I\'ve had in long while.  Chart says 3/4 of a length.  I think it was less.

[plasticman]

Sekrah, please don\'t retire. I like your bold predictions, hey, you cant always be right. The great thing about this game is that you\'re (all of us) going to be wrong way more than you\'re right, but if you\'re right at the same time everyone ELSE is wrong, you can make more money than you ever dreamed possible.

As far as pedigree and experience go, AK only had what, 4 lifetime starts? He may just be a horse who can \'run on anything\'. He won on 4 different tracks and was training forwardly at Churchill. The word on the street was that he was handling the dirt just fine in the mornings. His relative was Always a Princess who beat top horses on the dirt at SA before she broke down. The sire and the dam are turfers by reputation, but who\'s to say that they wouldnt have been able to handle dirt if that was their calling?

To all the other retirees and retirees in training, you\'re right about this being a glorified allowance race. When you have a horse in the race (that #20 horse) who can barely run a 90 Beyer, than you know this isnt really a \'world class field\' and these horses are average by historical standards and are really interchangable. Meaning, anyone can win on any given day.

[Uncle Buck]

In looking for post race clues as to AK\'s superiority in the Derby, I couldn\'t help but notice just how HUGE this horses nostrils are. They look like a double barrell shotgun compared to the other\'s noses. It almost looks like they\'re wing like, catching all the air they can. This guy is a locomotive with all that air passing through his circulatory system.

They look dialated twice the amount of the Nehro\'s and MMM\'s. Have a look:

http://sports.yahoo.com/rah/gallery;_ylt=AkGK9vJst7D66L9lrZPk3LkX47kF#photoViewer=urn%3Anewsml%3Asports.yahoo%2Cgetty%3A20050301%3Arah%2Cphoto%2C9563c414ab5625faa169c53751c3ebdc-getty-109348814tl013_137th_kentuc%3A1