Mr. Fantasy and the Gotham

[miff]

\"By the way, Mr. Fantasy ran 2-1-09 at 1 and 1/16th at 1:45.1.
Mr. Fantasy ran Saturday 1 and 1/16th at 1:44.1

IWR ran 3 races at 1/16th in Cal and ran 1:42.2, 1:41.4, 1:42.1.
Why would anyone be surprised that he would drill Mr. Fantasy all day long?

A Cal shipper with some tactical speed moving into a race with a soft pace?\"


Small,

You are using raw times to compare MF and IWR. If your observation is valid(re raw times) the fig guys would be out of business.

Clearly,Mr.Fantasy was a faster horse than IWR, going in, on all data.Maybe I missed your point, but it seemed that you felt IWR was faster than MF going in.I was clearly surprised that IWR ran off from that field in a powerful overall performance. He had not shown pure ability close to that before.

Lastly, given that there were 4 horse s inside with faster positional speed than IWR, I would have bet that he would not get that trip, i.e lay second in the stalk position.

Nice pick, I knew he had a shot, but felt there were several things against him and no value at 3-1.It\'s good that IWR is staying in NY to train up to the Wood. His next race should be interesting.

Mike

[jimbo66]

Big,

Not sure I agree with you on FOY vs Gotham.  Any horses with paired up 0\'s in the FOY?  Plus, the FOY was a 1-turn mile.  I am not saying Quality Road won\'t get 2 turns or 1 1/4 but the fact is that a 1 turn mile is really a sprint, not a route race.  

I am OK with I Want Revenge running that fast on March 7th.  I have him at 55-1, and at that price, I want a horse that is fast enough to win the derby, in the starting gate.  Ideally, would I have had Talamo stop hitting the horse in the stretch and hand ride him to a 3 or 4 length win, instead of hitting him and opening up on the field, in what will assuredly be a race figure that wins most derbies.  Of course.  

We will see about how I WAnt Revenge does in the Wood and then hopefully the Derby.  AS for our host\'s comments about him not finishing in the top half of the field (and implying he might not even make the field), I am certainly concerned that an expert in this field is so dowon on the horse.  However, I am emboldened a bit, when I recall last year\'s comments from JB about this time.  Something along the lines of \"War Pass being easily the most likely winner of the DErby and Big Brown 50% at best, to even appear in the race..........

[TGJB]

We had IWR 3-2/2.

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- I think IWR has a better chance of running 1-2-3 in the Wood than in the top ten in the Derby fora couple of reasons, one of which has to do with certain rules at CD, but that\'s another story.

Regardless, there is nothing wrong with 55-1 on a horse that hs already run fast enough around 2 turns to win the race.

[Caradoc]

Mike: According to yesterday\'s DRF, Mullins had to ship IWR back to California due to some licensing issue regarding his help.

[miff]

Caradoc,

Thanks, that\'s surprising as many are illegal aliens anyway. Fake SS cards cheap too.The back and forth ship is obviously not good.

Mike

[smalltimer]

jimbo,
This will be kind of a mixed reply.

There is a way to relate those synthetic figures to dirt...

IWR got EXACTLY the kind of trip that was expected.  Slow fractions. The only 2 times this horse has been close was due to slow fractions, the 10-29 HOL race and the Gotham.  When they\'re running 5 to 10 lengths slower than par, this horse is gonna hang around in close attendance.  That\'s not gonna be the case at Churchill.

My \"agreement\" with Jerry\'s point.  JB dislikes this horse because he feels he will not run back well or just fall apart (paraphrasing).  Absolutely legit reasoning.  My \"agreement\" with Jerry is based on a different premise.  That being, this horse will not be in close attendance if he makes the Derby, and the races that have been quicker up front, this horse has hung the entire distance after the first mile.

To this horse\'s benefit:  He appears to be improving, the addition of blinkers 2 races back have seemed to help, plus, he ran in NY without bute, which is a good indicator that he doesn\'t need that to run well, which is not always the case with the West Coast horses shipping into Churchill.

I hope he makes the Derby and runs well for you, but, he\'ll have to beat me.

[Ohlo]

Mark Casse has a theory that horses with turf pedigrees run better on the dirt at Churchill than on other dirt tracks. I\'m not sure how much evidence he bases it on (he did set a spring meet record for victories there in \'88), but here\'s what he said last spring before the Derby:  
\"A lot of racetracks when the horses\'s foot goes in the dirt, it goes in really deep. A lot of horses, especially a turf horse, get a lot of slippage. They lose traction. At Churchill, there isn\'t as much depth to the surface, at least in the spring.\"
Pletcher\'s take, at the same time last spring:
\"I think Churchill is a surface that turf horses sometimes do well on the dirt, more so than a lot of other tracks.\"

[smalltimer]

jimbo,
First of all, I wasn\'t making a post race analysis.  I knew going in that IWR would drill Mr. Fantasy. Like it or not, it was based upon pace.  I know pace is not welcome on this board, but, to dismiss an expected pace in that particular race, is just plain silly.  

I hate to dispute your expertise, but IWR has \"tactical\" speed when they\'re crawling on the front end.

I have to respectfully reject your suggestion that I pick a camp.  If I need you to tell me what I\'m supposed to think, I\'ll ask you, okay? You work with your opinions and experience and I\'ll do likewise.  

Jimbo, there\'s more than one way to get it done in this sport.

No disrespect intended jimbo.
Good luck

[smalltimer]

Mike,
Good response.
No, I don\'t use raw times.  I\'ve played horses since 1965, so I\'ve moved a bit beyond using raw times.
My opinion going into the race was simple.  Why would anyone not think that IWR \"could\" run the 1/16th in comparable 1:44 or less?  Maybe I dealt in semantics, but I knew what I expected to happen, and in this case, it did.  
The par numbers I used just showed that IWR could sit near the front on a soft pace.  Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing technical, just a positive factor the horse had in his favor.    
It\'s been my experience when horses ship back east or even to OP or the FG the horses that really do well, especially young horses, are in fairly close attendance.  In the older horses, those that come from out of it on the West Coast do even better.  There are exceptions.  Contradiction?  Of course, but that\'s been my experience.
I don\'t over-analyze it, I just use it as a factor just like post position, weight, workouts over the surface, etc.
Maybe its because the weather is consistently nice on the So Cal circuit and the training is more consistent, is it possible the general fields are just a bit more fit, day in and day out?  
To your other point, I did NOT feel IWR was faster going in, because clearly he wasn\'t.  I thought Mr. Fantasy was @ 3 lengths faster before taking into account the surfaces and the anticipated fractions.
Take care

[TreadHead]

I brought an even more refined version of this theory that was largely ignored or booed that I read on BRISnet a few years back.  The theory says that horses with larger hoofs tend to take to the CD track better (which may also be true of turf as well), and they even went so far as to publish the hoof sizes of the derby horses (rated on an A to F scale).

Barbaro (A-) was the last year they published this in their free daily newsletter, and I have no idea where else someone would get data like this.  But I did use the theory last year on Pyro, after being generally confused as to whether or not he should be used, I decided to use the rumors of his pin-sized deer-hoofs as the tipping point to leave him out of all wagers.  

While these 2 examples certainly don\'t constitute anything close to statitistical proof, such proof would seeminly be easy to verify or deny if the data were available.

[jimbo66]

Smalltimer,

Since I feel I am engaging in another conversation with \"Class Handicapper\" and \"Fkach\" under another moniker (this time \"smalltimer\"), I am a bit concerned about continuing this, but what the heck.

If you thought IWR was a lock to beat Mr. Fantasy, based on \"pace figures\" then you definitely are on the wrong board, and you are also guilty of red-boarding.  I saw pace figures for the Gotham, several sets in fact, and none of them predicted that IWR would be sitting second early in the race, right on the flank of Mr. Fantasy.  

I Want Revenge has tactical speed.  Tactical speed doesn\'t mean sitting 1st or 2nd, he has been much sharper early in the race since they added the blinkers. Put your pace figures down and watch the Gotham replay.  Talamo drifted him out into the 4 path down the backstretch to get him off the bit as he wanted the lead right out of the gate and wanted to go at Mr Fantasy throughout the first mile.  He has more then enough speed to sit somewhere between 6th and 10th during the first half mile of the Derby, then make a move on the far turn.

If you want to take a stance that IWR won\'t get the same trip he got in the Gotham in the Derby, that is not a revelation.  There will be 18 to 20 horses in the Derby.  Trips will be tougher.  And BTW, on this board, a 3w/2w trip, like the one IWR got, is not the \"ideal trip\".  A nice 1w/1w trip would be much much better.  

But then again, whatever works for you, so be it, smalltimer (or Class handicapper, or FKach)

[jimbo66]

Wow,

You thought Mr. Fantasy was 3 lengths faster than I want revenge going into the race, but your par pace figures said that the slower I Want Revenge would get a trip near a very soft pace, that would be set by Mr. FAntasy and that made it abundantly clear that you should bet the slower horse, tracking the faster horse that would be setting the slow pace, at roughly the same price.  2-1 vs 5-2.

What a post......

[smalltimer]

Jimbo,
If you\'re concerned with continuing this, then let it go.  I didn\'t make my original post to encourage your insults, and frankly, when I post on the board I\'m not addressing you as an expert anyhow. By YOUR own admission, you have no confidence in using and adjusting synthetic to dirt figures. (jimbo66  Mar 8, 11:58 a.m. post).

On your (jimbo66 March 7, 10:07 p.m. post) you write, \"Slow california shipper with slow synthetic figs comes east and runs a new top...There is just no way to relate those synthetic figures to dirt.\"  So based upon YOUR admitted inability to relate those figures, you wanna dog me for actually understanding them by applying what I know is true?

Let\'s try this:  IF the cal shipper figures are in fact wrong, (and they are), and they actually are 2-3 points stronger than they are given, they why is it such a stretch to think that Mr. Fantasy had a real LEGITIMATE advantage in this race?  IF, the cal shipper numbers are TOO low, (and they are), then IWR sits right on the front end in a race that is s-l-o-w.....Don\'t you get it jimbo?  The numbers are wrong.

On your other (jimbo66 March 8, 11:58 a.m. post) you write. \"I have no doubts I am using the best data available (TG)O when I am handicapping a dirt track where the horses are mostly dirt horses, or handicapping a turf race where the horses have previous turf figures, but we are seeing too many of these synthetic to dirt \"WTF figures\" to feel confident about how to USE them and how to ADJUST to your handicapping.\"  Are you kidding me jimbo??  Read your own words, you want to dog me for the way I handicap a move from synthetic to dirt, when in fact, you have no confidence in the way you\'re doing it? Instead of questioning or minimizing the way I analyzed the race, maybe you should be taking notes, or at least consider there is another way.  

Because Mr. Fantasy appears faster on paper, doesn\'t make it true when you\'re dealing with less than legitimate numbers.  Geez, just read your own words about your admitted confusion with relating those figures.

And yes, the way I do it, does work for me when converting synthetic to dirt.  Does your way of doing it work for you? Apparently not.

Good luck

[smalltimer]

jimbo,
That\'s a clueless response.  Read my earlier post this morning.
Thanks