Joe Bravo

[TheBull]

His horse better have been real sore for him to totally wrap up like that in the nightcap today. And yes I had a 20 dollar 9-3 that would have got me out for the day, so maybe Im biased.....but when you wrap up and then look over to your left and see the other horse coming and you still make no effort to ride, it looks really bad.

[Topcat]

TheBull Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> His horse better have been real sore for him to
> totally wrap up like that in the nightcap today.
> And yes I had a 20 dollar 9-3 that would have got
> me out for the day, so maybe Im biased.....but
> when you wrap up and then look over to your left
> and see the other horse coming and you still make
> no effort to ride, it looks really bad.


Hear that . . . but tell you what . . . after the first left-handed swat, meaningful time passed before that five-path pirouette to the right.   Were I Bravo, I\'d be markedly-unnerved/shaken up after that pronounced sideways move and would be looking to simply get home safe.   JMO.

[Boscar Obarra]

Ok, so I rewatched the race and the head on.

 I don\'t think anyone tries harder than Bravo.  If you watch the head on, you can see what he had to do to keep things together.  To be critical of him because he didn\'t beat up  on an already suspect runner is really bad form.

 Pun intended.

[SoCalMan2]

Boscar Obarra Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ok, so I rewatched the race and the head on.
>
>  I don\'t think anyone tries harder than Bravo.  If
> you watch the head on, you can see what he had to
> do to keep things together.  To be critical of him
> because he didn\'t beat up  on an already suspect
> runner is really bad form.
>
>  Pun intended.


I meant to chime in here too. I did not watch a replay, but I watched the race (none of my horses hit the board or were affected by the disturbance)....Bravo was riding his horse very hard at head of the stretch and the horse responded crazily to the right hand whip. If his horse had won the race, there was no question whatsoever it was coming down. Given how the horse had behaved, I would not begrudge a rider whose judgment was that the horse would not respond well to further urging.

For all anybody knows, if he had pushed, the horse might have clobbered the 4 on the rail and then been taken down anyway and then have gotten days for reckless riding.

[Al Caught Up]

I keyed the Bravo horse in that race--didn\'t play the winner with him because I stupidly never saw the rider change from J Davis to I Ortiz (ugh)--but SoCal is absolutely right. He took a dog leg toward the grandstand when Bravo got to him with the whip and I think he would have been nuts to persevere with the horse. Bravo it looked to me got every bit of effort out of the horse and the horse was having no more of it... I was less annoyed with his effort than with my not noticing the rider change on the winner, which kept me out of the tri.

[BitPlayer]

They talked about this a lot on Saratoga Live.  Richard Migliore made a pretty convincing case that the horse shied from something in the infield.  You can see his ears go up just before his swerve.  Migliore also mentioned that a collision that severe can easily knock the wind out of a horse.

I\'m surprised they didn\'t talk more about the jock switch.  This was not the only horse on that card that Jacqueline Davis took off.  I never saw an explanation.  She was back riding yesterday.  Ortiz became available because his mount was scratched.