Easy Goer-- whoa, pal. I didn\'t do the analysis, but I thought (along with pretty much everyone else) that AA was the most likely winner. The point is not that the horse got beat, it\'s that he didn\'t fire-- which was very likely the rersult of the huge effort and only two weeks recovery time.
I saw a report elsewhere that AA was scoped after the race, and showed a 3 on a scale of 5 lung infection. This is EXACTLY the kind of thing stressful efforts can induce, by knocking out a horse\'s resistance to infection-- in fact, there was one time I predicted it in advance. I was working with Dickinson on Da Hoss, and he insisted on running the horse back on two weeks rest after the Illinois Derby in a meaningless allowance at Garden State, just to get a grass start in him before the Jersey Derby. I told him he was risking knocking the horse out, but Michael wouldn\'t listen-- so we won the allowance and the derby, 3 starts in 5 weeks, and the horse got sick and missed a month\'s training. Michael said it was a coincidence. We traded a start in a 25k allowance for a start in a graded stake.
