TGJB or TGAB - An Opinion

[smalltimer]

Hard Spun ran TP on Mar 24, then the Derby on May 5.  About 41/42 days I think.

[Silver Charm]

Came out to 6 weeks on my calculator. And I did it three times.

Jones has built in excuses. The Wood is too soon, The BG is on Synthetic and what if his horse hates it and runs last. The Lexington too close and also on Synthetic.

Might not be a bad idea for the Tesio at Laurel to beef up the purse, get Graded and run the same day as the BG and Ark Derby.

Be a logical spot for FF.

[Flighted Iron]

TGJB,

  So without the last figure you can\'t tell too much. I will be looking for horses that have a good 2yo top, and move forward to or pair up a good but not extreme figure going in

  With the prelim data on RA doesn\'t she fit the bill?

mjs

[covelj70]

Oddly enough, even though this crop of 3 year olds seems much better than last years crop at this point, not too many of them ran very fast as 2 year olds.

Alot of them left themselves alot of work to do.

The only ones that really check ALL of the boxes in terms of being able to get to a 2 negative without improving so much from their 2 year old top that they could be in trouble of going backwards are:

Quality Road
Old Fashioned, and
Rachael Alexandra

There is a group of others that fit some of the parameters but who are more questionable for various reasons, including:

Dunkirk (no 2 year old form)

West Side Bernie (probably the most likely to fit the \"rules\" of this group)

Silver City (distance issues and probably off the trail)

Giant Oak (connections saying likely off the trail)

Pamplemouse (work to do to get to 2 neg but good pattern and possible poly/dirt \"jump\" candidate)

Pioneer of the Nile (Mott says better on turf/poly than dirt, opposite of I Want Revenge)

Beethoven (running against speed bias at GP and a bit slow as a 2 year old but hard to knock this one too much)

Chocolate Candy (eligible to be right there if he jumps poly to dirt but how are we to know that?)

Imperial Council (needs to show up in the wood but he fits alot of the criteria)

[Silver Charm]

Cove,

Everything has changed. The guidelines and parameters are a really good place to start to sift thru the confusion but......

2YO form is not what it used to be. Look at Curlin and Big Brown.

Others like Smarty Jones and Hard Spun started very late and developed quickly at secondary levels of competition. Phil Park, Aqeduct Inner Dirt. Monarchos only ran once at 2 and was not a real threat.

Also I do not want to be sounding like I am leading the Dunkirk Fan Club but a trainer like Pletcher may have realized with the Unbridled Songs starting to early compounds the soundness issues they have. So maybe he waited.

Now he is up against the clock, but it is what it is......

[Silver Charm]

You could add Quality Road to that list. One maiden race on Turkey Day Weekend is not exactly a Rock Solid 2YO base.

Even though this horse is extremely talented and REALLY fast.

[TGJB]

Street Sense went dirt/poly/dirt and it worked out okay.

[Silver Charm]

Jerry, the trainer had an idea what he was doing in the BG because he had used the same angle the year before in the Lanes End Futurity then the BC Juvy.

He just followed the same formula.

Jones doesn\'t have that luxury.