The Holy Bull
This early in the preps and at the shorter distance, pedigree doesn't make the difference. When I look at the pedigrees I'm looking for horses that have the potential to get the classic distances. In addition to the potential they must have athletic ability.
There are 2 in here, My Adonis and Fort Loudon that have classic pedigrees but they haven't show any exceptional talent yet. Fort Loudon ran up a string of victories but they were in state bred races. He's only had one other race and that was against Hansen in the BC. It really wasn't a bad race considering the field and he had a bad post position and was wide around the turn. He seems to be a game horse and may do better coming off the pace .
My Adonis has a very nice pedigree and was looking good until his last race where he battled on a very quick pace and folded. Any horse can be beat if allowed to get into a speed duel so I have to throw out his last.
Of course Hansen is the one to beat. He's never been headed so we really don't know how fast he is and I don't think he will let anyone head him in this race. The only knock I have against him, and it's not for this race, is that his type pedigree with the Raise A Native G dams can be brilliant to 1 1/8 but I don't like them beyond that. But, one never knows when dealing with high speed. We won't know what he's made of until he gets challenged.
Then we have the 2 Bernardini colts and it's hard to fault either one at this distance. Consortium was narrowly beaten by Algorithms but lasix for the first time might make a difference. Then we have Silver Max who is always right there at the finish but his races have all been on the grass so I take this race as a move up in class for him.
Taken altogether, I think this could be a very contentious race so I'm going to shoot for some value:
1- #4 Hansen
2- #3 My Adonis
3- #5 Fort Loudon
4- #6 Algorithms
Recapping the Holy Bull it's kind of fuzzy as to why the race went the way it did. Hansen stumbled at the start and this could of been the cause of his being rank but I really don't think so. Maybe it was the track condition that did it but I'm more inclined to think it was a combination of the stumble, the track and jockey error. Ramon, in my opinion, is overly aggressive on a lot of horses. I know he wins a lot on the front end but, except in races away from NY, he usually has the best horse.
Perhaps I'm way out of line with my thinking but I happen to be one that gives a lot of consideration to jockeys. I have been watching races for over 60 yrs starting before the days of TV and reruns and have learned that jockeys are no where as good at judging pace as they are given credit for. That 22 second quarter did Hansen in. On the other hand, he could have been a little short on condition or even possibly over trained and left his best in a fast work. We won't know until he runs again and see if he rates kindly and also how he will do on a fast track.
Algorithms looks to be a good one and hasn't done anything wrong yet. I don't have him having what I like in a classic pedigree but I may be way off base with that. Can't fault him so far.
My Adonis tangled with Consortium at the start and dropped way off the pace. In fact, he was 20 lengths back at the half and closed about 15 lengths in the last half. He does have speed and I was expecting to see him sitting just off the leaders but he was left with way too much to do but ran a game race, He has a nice classic pedigree and still might be heard from in later races.
Backstretch.
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