Rosario

[jimbo66]

I think it is probably a good thing that the horse did run so poorly, because it was not a good ride.  

Sorry p-dub, but at least it isn\'t mike smith we are criticizing!

No worse ride for a big long strider like orb then trying to rush him up the rail then between horses down the back side. Ease him off the rail, let him get his long stride working.

But it clearly didn\'t matter. Orb was as empty as could be.  Shockingly empty (not a shock to all of us on the board, but a lot of us)

Rosario is an aggressive and young jockey.  He is gonna make mistakes.  His ride on animal kingdom against point of entry comes to mind. But his hot streak the last 60 days is about as hot as a jockey can get

[catcapper]

No excuses. Poor ride or not, rail or not, the horse did not fire, plain and simple.

We may all look back and analyze looking for reasons the race played out the way it did, but no excuses.

Any thoughts on how the track played? Speed held obviously, but it seemed dead all over. I got there later so I didn\'t see early races. JB, It may be too early to ask, but to what extent will your take on the track play into your assessment and final figs? I think if we consider a sloooww, dead track that is holding for speed, the race makes complete sense as to how it played. D.Wayne and GS had a plan and executed it beautifully. Maybe some factors fell in their favor, but they are veterans at this and deserve credit for their upset. They earned it, they did not come by it through default of the favorite.

I thought I was going to have a great view of the pre-race gallop out, but the access ramp to the infield caused them to reroute the horses the other way so I the only glimpses I could get of the horses pre-race was through my binocs looking at the jumbo screen in  front of me. I only got a glance or two of Orb. I wasn\'t solidly pleased about what I saw. His neck look a little high and tight, To me, he didn\'t seem so within himself as he was before the Derby in the paddock. I was anxious to see his tail set which had caught my eye before. In the only glance I got, it wasn\'t quite as I had hoped. These are only subjective and very limited observations, but I wonder if his mind was a bit thrown off by being in that open paddock with human madness all around. And then he got loaded into the hole, which maybe he doesn\'t like. BUT NO EXCUSES. And none of that mattered anyway to me because I was tied on so tight to him, I wasn\'t getting off. Besides, all the other horses had to deal with the scene in the paddock too. No excuses.

I stand schooled. I am assessing my lessons. Some I have learned? before. Conventional wisdom about pattern held. Oxbow had low numbers, followed by two 5\'s. I thought pattern wise, he could easily return to his earlier better level. That track seem dead and speed holding. I wasn\'t too surprised to see Gary Stevens to go wire to wire. Just personally disappointed by the outcome, but happy to have seen a good horse race. Looking back at the race, it is making sense to me.

[MonmouthGuy]

Agreed. I would not call that re-rallying.  He actually lost ground in stretch on IMLD who was staggering home like a drunken sailor.

[catcapper]

I would like to third that. Watching anyone but the winner in the replay is painful for me to see. It\'s only Gary Stevens\' ride that\'s left a smile on my face this morning.

[kekomi]

for an empty horse he made a prette nice move at the 1/2 mile pole, right about where he made his move in both the fountain of youth and the fl derby.

for an empty horse he sure made up a lot of ground to get up for 4th--the chart has him 9 lengths behind departing at the mile pole, and a length a head of him at the wire--the horses behind him never caught him, and the only horse to pass him that ended up in front of him was mylute.

only 2 horses ended the race more forwardly placed than they ran most of it--mylute and orb. every other horse, basically ran in place except for goldencents and titletownfive who backed up significantly.

i don\'t see this race as proof that orb isn\'t what people thought he was going in--i see it as race where one young horse wasn\'t given an optimal opportunity to win due to choices his rider made, while another young horse was give the most optimal opportunity to win based on choices his rider made.

anywho, you\'re a lot more emotionally invested in your take on the race than i am in mine. i\'m pretty comfortable with my assessment, especially after watching the overhead, but at the end of the day i\'m not an evangelist out to to convert you. one of the many great things about this sport is that a dozen people can watch the same race and have a dozen different interpretations as to what happened. any way you slice it, handicapping is never more that ill informed guessing about a future event, because we all lack far too much information to make truly informed guesses, even with the most perfectly run races.

peace

[P-Dub]

kekomi Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------
>
> anywho, you\'re a lot more emotionally invested in
> your take on the race than i am in mine. i\'m
> pretty comfortable with my assessment, especially
> after watching the overhead, but at the end of the
> day i\'m not an evangelist out to to convert you.
> one of the many great things about this sport is
> that a dozen people can watch the same race and
> have a dozen different interpretations as to what
> happened. any way you slice it, handicapping is
> never more that ill informed guessing about a
> future event, because we all lack far too much
> information to make truly informed guesses, even
> with the most perfectly run races.
>
> peace

I didn\'t have a dime on the race, so not emotionally invested. My emotions were with my wife, who I spent the day with celebrating our 1 year anniversary. Took BART to SF, hung out for the afternoon. Lunch, shopping, wife stuff. I didn\'t peak at my phone once. Honest. She actually watched the race with me after we got home, and even the Sharks game. Talk about true love.

Agree with your comment. Everyone has an opinion, many times different, watching the same thing. I\'m not saying Rosario gave a great ride, only that race dynamics (post, pace, etc..) gave him few options.

On to the next big race, Good Luck.

[kekomi]

in the stretch he was 2 1/2 lengths behind departing and goldencents, at the finish he was a 1/2 length ahead of them--if all three were staggering, one wouldn\'t have expected him to catch them, let alone pass them, especially since he had backed up 7 lengths behind them on the far turn.

the chart doesn\'t show this but its pretty clear on the replay--so he actually made up 9 lengths to catch departing and goldencents, and even if you factor in the fact that they were backing up when he passed them, he still made up at least 5 or 6 lengths. if he had truly hit the wall on the far turn, one would have expected him to finish like will take charge did, continuing to lose ground in the stretch, or at least to not have made up any significant amount of ground on any horse in front of him.

it was a disappointing outcome, but i\'m feel more disappointed for shug than for orb. i don\'t see the race as the doomsday that its being portrayed as. he had a bad race--you can chalk it up to patterns or not firing or what have you, if you like.  i chalk it up to a bad ride, on a crap track. my problem with the pattern theory is that it seems to be right after the fact as an explanation of a known outcome, more often than as predictor of an as yet unknown future outcome, and i say that meaning absolutely no disrespect to TGJB.

i rarely post, mostly because i prefer to read and ponder. and because i have a great dislike of the tendency for internet conversations to become pissing matches.

if your interpretation is right, you\'ll certainly profit from it in the future.

good luck, seriously

[rhagood]

Classic case of glass half full, glass half empty on Orb.  50/50 to run well or react. Many outward signs pointed in his favor but the ones we never see including those closest to him present themselves during the stress of a race.

As for Oxbow, he had the lead at the top of the stretch in the Derby and faded by far the least of any front runner in a pace that torched any near it.  On numbers not a max effort, on the short recovery not as much chance to get back to better numbers but had several things in his favor.  Lucas had commented all along he was a tough little horse that was hard to get to the bottom of and I guess he spoke the truth.  He had pad posts in all his prep races and as an early pace type that hurt his chances but got his best post draw for this race. Most importantly, he ran the same race as the Derby with the lead at the head of the stretch but in a much slower uncontested pace even adjusted for the track variants and just galloped home. With the other speed horses backing off and they way the race unfolded no one else had a chance.  

Final conclusion:

Orb not firing and the speed not contending produced an \"upset\" and that is all I will take from this race.

[TGJB]

By not firing we mean didn\'t run his best race, not necessarily that he ran worse than everyone else.

As I\'ve mentioned here before, the only thing Michael Dickinson and I ever agreed on was that horses who run tops sometimes come out of them looking great, and come out of the next one-- when they run far worse-- looking knocked out. I would not be surprised if that\'s how this goes for Orb.

As far as patterns go, I\'ve got one guy telling me he bet against Orb because he was off a pair of tops, another because he was off an 0-2.

[mjellish]

I\'ve watched the replay a few times now Kekomi, and what I see is the jock asking him as they hit the turn and orb coming up empty.  Yes, the pace was slow.  But orb overcame a slow pace in the Fl derby just fine.  Yes, maybe he needs to be out in the clear to run his race.  But he was in tight his first race around two turns and still fought his way through it.  For whatever reason he didn\'t fight his way through this one.  Did he get shuffled on the backstretch?  Sure he did.  But he didnt lose more lengths than the advantage he came into the race with figure wise.  It\'s not like oxbow ran a -3 here, and they sure didn\'t come home very fast.

He bounced.

I didn\'t think he would, but he did.  

Vito was right.

[TreadHead]

With MyLute putting 3 additional lengths on Orb thru the stretch alone, and improving 7 lengths on him from the 3/4 pole overall while racing wider, it is impossible to have any other opinion than Orb did not fire.  Orb passing horses late is an optical illusion of quitting horses, leaders were still putting ground in between themselves and Orb at the finish.

[Boscar Obarra]

the game is tough enough without resorting to fabrications.

 there is no ride that puts orb in the money , no less win.

 came up empty, for whatever reason. that\'s what horses coming off multiple efforts do.

[Perfect Drift]

Orb ran 3/4 in 114.31 and was 5 1/4 lengths behind.  After a mile in 139.94 he was 9 lengths behind he had a final time of 159.34 and was still 9 lengths behind.

Was the track composed of quicksand?  Tar?  Oxbow canters around in the track and shades 25 for each quarter, walks home 3/16 in 19.40 and NO ONE runs by him?

Usually we throw out the Derby and say the Preakness is a truly run race.  At this point, considering the inside/outside bias and the overall condition of the track, I think we have the opposite case.

[Boscar Obarra]

If nothing else, the daily mystery of how horses that should be 3-1 go off 15-1 and vice versa, is well solved by the commentary seen during the TC Trail.

[kekomi]

i think somewhere along the way the crux of my and p-dub\'s difference opinion and what the point we where discussing got lost--no doubt because my posts are always too long.

p-dub and i didn\'t differ on the fact that orb didn\'t run his race, we only differed on why. my opinion is that he never had a shot once rosario made the decision to keep him inside of other horses along the inside of the track--that he had a bad ride due to jockey error, based on the fact that once commiting to an inside race, rosario then balked at taking orb up the rail once he bridged the gap to oxbow and goldencents between the mile pole & the 3/4 pole, getting him boxed in, and allowing titletownfive to take the only path open to hm at that point. p-dub disagreed and felt that rosario had not choice with he trip he gave orb and that he didn\'t take back, rather orb backed up..

i\'ve never said orb ran a competitive race, in fact i said just the opposite--the only difference is that i\'m not willing to say it was a bounce, becuaaue he wasn\'t given an opportunity to run his race. the outcome may have been the same even with any outside trip, in which case a bounce would seem the most likely explanation, but given that the only horse that was able to make up any ground was mylute who had the widest trip all race, it is just as reasonable to conclude the path taken was the culprit.

not sure how that equates with fabrication, which is a synonym for lying. also, a little confuse with mjellish\'s reply, given he felt going into the race that the one hole could seriously compromise orb, unless rosario got him out wide early.

the one thing that i\'d like to apologize for is that in discussing orb\'s ride i did get all confused with the lengths--conflating his distance from oxbow to is distance to departing. that was just sloppy on my part.

here\'s what seems unconstestable about the preakness to me:

orb made a move between the mile pole and the 3/4 pole that bridged the distance between himself and the two leaders.

orb got boxed in at this point and began to back up.

despite backing up, for whatever reason one chooses to attribute this to, he never was caught or passed by the horses behind him, and he caught and passed the two horses in front of him that he was closest to--even if this was because they came back to him, he could only have done this if he was moving faster than they were at that point, which would indicate he had more left in the tank than one of the freshest horses in the race, which is inconsistent with a conclusion that he backed up on the far turn due to being empty.

four horses clearly did not run their race, 4 horses seemed to have run their race, and one horse may or may not have run his race. i haven\'t timed each horse from the top of the stretch yet, but it is just as likely that mylute made up ground because itsmylucky day and oxbow came back to him, as it is that his accelaration caught them. for a fast front running horse to run the fractions he did, it is arguable that even oxbow didn\'t really run his race, but was lucky enough to take a lead on a track that wasn\'t conducive to making up ground.

every horse that ran inside for any length of time seemde to stall out--departing made a nice move on the outside on the turn for home, is taken inside and starts running in place. goldencents who ran outside the whole race didn\'t run out of steam as much as departing did.

i agree that based on the race run, orb was never in contention--i\'ve never argued otherwise--i just disagree as to why.

i\'ll leave you guys alone about this now =)