Curlin Who?

[Lost Cause]

Why Comical??
Have you looked at the DIRT races that Asiatic Boy has run in Dubai???...Dominant is the only word to describe them...Throw out the Turf races he ran.
Curlin has to ship to Dubai and race without any drugs on an unfamiliar surface against a horse who loves the surface and has ability.  

I think Curlin is a very good horse and I am no fan of Dubai horses when it comes to class, but I won\'t play Curlin in that race with all of the factors against him, I actually like Premium Tap more than him also since that one ran a good race against Invasor on this track last year and IMHO Invasor would have killed Curlin at any track.  But that\'s just my opinion.

[Badride]

Its comical because Asiatic Boy has never beat anything. The races he ran in ARG were bad races. Joe Louis has proven to be a mediocre horse. Husson although he hasnt raced since May of 07 was a nice enough horse but he beat Asiatic boy each time they ran. Traffic Guard who ran second to Asiatic Boy in both starts is a complete zero. We know the English horses can run, and they drummed him. So what has he ever beat besides Diabolical who fell down at the break? The answer is nothing, and thats a big issue when you are talking about facing some of the horses hes going to line up with WCD

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

I\'m not real concerned about Gashopper yet. He\'s gonna have to meet the best and go off at decent odds to pique my interest.

Regarding Asiatic Boy, I\'m not looking at figures, but he is a very lightly raced horse for a 5YO. He\'s averaging about 2.5 races a year. That tends to indicate he\'s had some issues. If he hasn\'t been 100% in some of his races that could explain off races and an X-O pattern. That said, he has six wins and two seconds in ten starts. What I like about him is his breeding. Most of the proximate breeding is Argentinia so it\'s hard to get a handle on what those horses produced, but the blood in those proximate branches is very good \"old\" blood.
He\'s certainly got the breeding to be a gamer.

It\'s now or never. He just turned Five.

http://www.pedigreequery.com/asiatic+boy

Lost Cause Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Forget Grasshopper for now...Curlin better keep
> his mind on Asiatic Boy In Dubai...When Asiatic
> Boy hits dirt he transforms into something
> special.

[Silver Charm]

Jerry can you confirm this. If this is true then this would make him faster than Curlin. The Ragozin guys gave him a Negative 2 with trouble.

[miff]

A negative Rag-2equal to a neg -5 1/2 on TG if they agree,Grass outran the 3yr filly Indian Blessing by .29hundreds and she got a 99 beyer.grasshopper got a beyer of 102 which with weight, no ground loss to speak of,equates to a TG of app zero.Neg 5 1/2 would be a bad joke.Tough to believe Rags gave that fig, must be smokin some strong stuff over there if true.I have serious doubt that TG will see that performance anywhere near -5 1/2.


More interesting is how to treat Pyro\'s\'s(90 beyer) snail like final time in light of the time of Indian Blessing (99beyer). Guess TG will give Pyro a fig with the sl pace note.Pyro\'s last quarter of 22. 60 is freakish despite the slow pace.

Mike

[fkach]

>More interesting is how to treat Pyro\'s\'s(90 beyer) snail like final time in light of the time of Indian Blessing (99beyer). Guess TG will give Pyro a fig with the sl pace note.Pyro\'s last quarter of 22. 60 is freakish despite the slow pace. <

This kind of thing is always an issue when the pace may have impacted the final time (which IMO it almost certainly did in this case).

I believe you should just give the race the figure it deserves and make note of the pace so people can subjectively decide what, if any impact it had on the the individual horses.  The reason I believe that is because the horses have different levels of ability and run different paces within the same race. So they are impacted differently.

The problem of course is that it\'s often difficult to seperate the impact of pace from the impact of the track speed when assigning a figure.

[BitPlayer]

From looking at the chart and replay, I\'d guess that Silver Lord and Magna Graduate will both get better figs (roughly equal weight; more ground loss than beaten lengths) than Grasshopper.

[Silver Charm]

Miff,

Didn\'t Beyer give Smarty Jones a 99 when TG had him at Negative Three. The Beters are ok but I would be careful looking strictly at them when measuring performance.

Regarding Ragozin they gave One Hot Wish a 1 last April in a 2YO four furlong dash so a Negative 2 for Grasshopper seems about right does it not?

[miff]

Silver,

With respect, if Grass gets neg -5 1/2 on TG, you can use that sheet for wallpaper.Unimaginable!! Don\'t recall Smarty Beyers but fig makers sometimes disagree.

Mike

[TGJB]

I don\'t know of any other place where there is serious figure making discussion. I\'m proud it takes place on this board.

Bit-- Basically correct, the second and third finishers got slightly better numbers.

SC and Miff-- it\'s almost impossible that Ragozin gave GH a negative figure. If he did, the right way to use the sheet would be around the house, but not as wallpaper.

[miff]

JB,

...too rough on the derriere, no?, that Rag paper.


Mike

[marcus]

Fractional time\'s in the Risen Star may also imo have been the result of a slow playing surface for that race .. .

[firmturf]

Pyro\'s number should be overshadowed by \"Z\"\'s number in the same race. 6 pounds more and he enountered 2 lengths more in ground loss (on my trip notes) then was only beat by two lengths by the winner.

Pyro was 5/1 in the futures, \"Z\" was 40/1!!!

[fkach]

>Fractional time\'s in the Risen Star may also imo have been the result of a slow playing surface for that race <

The one problem with the idea that the track slowed down for that race is that Pyro came home in eye popping raw time.

[marcus]

You may be right fkach - I was just entertaining the idea that \"if\" indeed the track came up  slow for the race while taking into account ground loss , that effort would be even more impressive ...