A couple of random thoughts out of the Big Brown yesterday.
1. Big Brown is gutsy. I wasn\'t so sure of that until yesterday, although I did suspect it after the Haskell, when he looked beaten there. I would have taken 3-5 on Proudinsky at the top of the stretch. A solid G1/G2 turf pro, with that trip, should have ran down Big Brown in the stretch. Until the halfway point of the stretch it looked like he would, but if you look closely at the tape, Kent stopped hitting Big Brown late, as he felt \"home\". Not saying he could have won by more, that would be wrong, but if the race were another 100 yards, Proudinsky wasn\'t getting by.
2. The figure for the race will not look as good as his Haskell, but I don\'t care, it was a better performance. Already talked on this board about top turf figures not being the same as top dirt figures, and plus, transferring top dirt form to grass is rare and Big Brown did that, as yesterday\'s race was very legit. But the figure will likely have to be low, at least on TG, as Shakis (not a good TG horse) seemed to take an overland route and was coming late.
3. Proundinsky didn\'t get a bad ride by Dominguez, quite the opposite. I guess the rest of the board has beaten up that poster enough already, so I won\'t go on with that.
4. It is long past time now for me to get off the Proudinsky bandwagon. I have bet him three times in a row now, and been disappointed/disgusted with him each time. At least I don\'t stand alone, as the host here as given him out in the analysis/ROTW those same three times. Time to forget about his \"0\" and move on. He is a typical \"sheets sucker horse\" to me, at least in hindsight. He gets a bad wide ride, runs a big figure and loses. When he gets a good ride, he runs a worse figure, and loses.
5. This last comment is a bit tough to say. But \"kudos\" to IAEH stable and also to rick dutrow for their handling of Big Brown. No early retirement, they are racing this horse. They had every right to retire him after the Belmont and most would have. All the experts, including our TGJB were talking about how this horse had 1 or 2 races left in him BEFORE the Derby. JB called him 50/50 to run in the Derby, let alone win it. Give this group some credit, they gambled with running this horse again, gambled putting him back on the grass in what was a race with severl fast turf horses, and now they seem likely to put this horse on a synthetic racing surface. And their actions have allowed debates like the one this morning on this board to happen (should he run in the BC Turf or BC Classic). Whereas with others recently, by this point in the season we were debating about what mares they should cover (less interesting to most of us). And finally, the \"talking smack\" to Curlin owners is not classless, it is gamesmanship and good for the game. Keep going with that. (on the other hand criticizing the connections of Smarty Jones, pre-Belmont WAS classless, but let\'s move on)
