Newsletter #70 Sat. 5/18/13
PIM R12 The Preakness G1
Perhaps I'm wrong about this but I am just drawing a line through the KY Derby. Orb is a very nice horse and may be the best of this year's crop but I feel he still must beat some of the others on the square, and the Derby was certainly not the race to prove it to me.
In the Derby, it seems to me that, for the most part, the jocks just played the hand they were dealt and the closers were dealt a hand full of aces. Also, the jocks dropped another notch in my opinion of them as judges of pace or how hard their horse is running, especially JJ and Stevens. I don't fault Smith because his horse evidently ran off with him but one would expect that the others on the horses that want to run close to the pace would have had an inkling that they were going much too fast and just let Palace Malice go by himself until he ran out of gas. In my humble opinion, if JJ and Stevens had not gotten antsy the outcome may have been much different.
In addition to the wicked pace it was evident the track was getting slower as the day went by and was becoming very tiring which was bore out by the slow finish of the race. So, I am going to basically disregard the Derby as to how it pertains to this race and go back to square one.
1- Oxbow
2- Goldencents
3-Orb
4- Departing
Long Shots- Mylute, Will Take Charge
I am betting this race to try and make a score if right in my opinion. I will play the exotics like this; 2,6/1,4,5,7
Good Luck,
Backstretch
Recap
Oxbow finally gets a good post and does his thing. I know that everyone says Stevens stole the race but I don't see it that way. In my 60+ years at this game I must have watched a million races and I have said time and time again, "Only the horses know how fast they are going." Handicappers see the fractions of a race and say they are going too fast or too slow but I have seen tons of races where the leaders go the half in 43 or 44 and just keep on going and on the other hand they may go in 48 or so and quit like dogs. Only the horses know if they are being over extended regardless of what the clock tells us.
In this particular race, if the pace was so slow, why didn't the other speed horses get in the money, especially Goldencents who had a perfect stalking trip. I think it was simply because they couldn't keep up with Oxbow regardless of the so called slow fractions. That track was very deep and tiring and the races were getting slower as the day went on.
If, as with the Derby, one can't see why the race went as it did then there's no way to predict the outcome of following races. The Derby was handed to the closers on a silver platter and none of them may ever find a gift like that again. I've read a lot of comments after the Preakness about how good Oxbow's derby really was considering the circumstances but judging from his 15/1 odds it would seem that there was an awful lot of after the fact judgements. Let's hear all this stuff BEFORE and not after the race
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