The Big Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Lost Cause]

As a horse gambler I am in competition with my fellow handicappers everyday through the Parimutuel wagering systems.  When I win a race I do the fist pump and scream and will occasionally say crazy things like that horse couldn\'t lose.  I\'m sure all of you have done that before..including HP and P-Dub...Is that not the same thing??  Are you not in the same way demeaning the other gamblers by screaming for your horse or hooting and hollering when they just lost against you in that parimutuel pool.

[HP]

It\'s funny that you say this but I actually make a conscious effort not to react to anything visibly at the track.  I don\'t like to get emotional about winning or losing.  I figure even if you are GREAT you are going to LOSE most of the time.  

I love when I\'m standing there after a race and the guys are always walking around and showing their losing tickets around and talking about how they lost and how close they came and what they almost did.  Like a complete stranger will walk up to me and show me a ticket say...\"look I had 2, 4, 6 on top and I woulda had it if the 5 came in second!\"  I practice looking sympathetic in the mirror at home for these occasions...  

To me the coolest thing is to win a big tri and just walk up and collect like nothing happened.  All in a day\'s work.  Yawn.  I just think that\'s fun.  

I don\'t think it\'s anything as serious as \"demeaning\" anyone or anything.  I just think it looks cooler to win and act like it\'s no big deal.  When I get in my car and I\'m all by myself...THEN I yell and scream, briefly.  

HP

[Lost Cause]

HP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>  When I get in my car and I\'m all by myself...THEN
> I yell and scream, briefly.  
>
> HP


You have a lot more control than me...When my horses are running to the wire bobbing head and head for my money I still get excited and holler at the tv screen even after all these decades.  Sounds like a case of to each his own..

[sekrah]

You don\'t like jockeys who attract fans (new bettors) to the game?

Along with being outrageously bitter,  you\'re a real smart guy too huh?

[jimbo66]

Dana666,

Yep, I do buy the freakin sheets, but whether I do or not, doesn\'t change that Zenyatta is not a great filly.  Yes, she consistently runs in the negative 1 range, but that makes her good, not great.  She is way slower than Rachel and also slower than some less than great fillies like Sightseek.  

Since some good handicappers on this board seem to be more impressed with her win on Sunday than I was, I watched the race again a couple more times.  (btw Dana666, \"good handicappers\" doesn\'t apply to you).  I don\'t see it.  I see a filly that is by her nature, pace compromised, and when the fractions were extremely slow, she can come home fast and nip a very mediocre horse by a nose.  Annabaa\'s Creation is not even a Grade 3 animal.  Gimme a break.  The fact that she can accelerate the last 5/16ths off a slow pace is \"great\".  Not by any reasonable definition.  She needs to beat ridiculously bad fields like Sunday\'s by more than a nose, to be considered great.

I don\'t even remember what person posted it, but whoever talked about how Rachel beat nobody in the Haskell is just stupid.  She was 3 wide chasing the fastest three year old sprinter in the country, then opened up on that Grade 1 winner as well as Grade 1 and Classic winner Summer Bird and Grade 1 winner Papa Clem.

yeah, shitty field.  Especially compared to the titanic Clement Hirsch field...

[HP]

Talk about being smart SEKRAH...

\"You don\'t like jockeys who attract fans (new bettors) to the game?\"

How many \"new bettors\" do you imagine are being attracted by ANY jockey EVER?  You\'re kidding, right?  You\'re telling me people who don\'t bet on horses are starting to swarm the racetrack and play because of Calvin Borel?  Pass some of whatever it is you\'re having over here!  

HP

[sekrah]

People love him and are betting on him.  His rides are becoming underlays because of his enhanced profile.   If you are denying this, you are just living in a box.

The Men\'s 100 Meter dash hasn\'t had this much interest since Donovan Bailey/Michael Johnson 15+ years ago.   Why?  Because of Usain Bolt\'s showboating.  It\'s made people either love him or hate him.


If you are denying that Borel is good for the game, YOU are the one smoking something.

[Dana666]

Now you\'re bringing up matters into which you have no insight whatsoever. . . how in the world would you know anything about my so-called handicapping skills???

For the last time, I mean no disrespect to Rachel A. I never said she wasn\'t perhaps one of the greatest ever. I\'d like to see how the rest of this year pans out and next year, etc. I\'m not judging any horse by a few races, however brillant.

Zenyatta has run more than a few super races, and she repeats her form again and again, over years now. Her physical confirmation and her action combined with her size are truly extraordinary and very rare. In my opinion (as a terrible handicapper) Rachel has never looked a really good horse in the eye and fought it out down the stretch, like Rags to Riches did to Curlin in the Belmont, for example. She\'s brillant, a freak, amazing all that, but I\'d like to see her look Quality Road in the eye, for example, and blow by him. I still contend this year\'s 3 year old\'s with all the injuries aren\'t that strong.

Re: Zenyatta, You may not be able to comprehend this, but I\'ll try. Horses run much faster numbers on dirt than turf or synthetic. The pace of turf and synthetics races is usually much slower at the beginning and faster at the end, like a grass race. You\'re never going to have any horse run as fast in such races as a dirt race, so the numbers in my mind would be a little loose compared to hard dirt figures. We\'ll never know unless they met on dirt. Apparently Sheriffs has no plans of anything like that which is sad. The BC in Santa Anita is the plan; I don\'t think they mean the classic either. Not even the Pacific Classic??? That blows my mind really. The Pacific Class would be a no-brainer for me.

I\'ve referneced an article: http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/aug/10/1s10delmar00549-its-12-0-zenyatta/?sports/horseracing&zIndex=146854

I quote: \"Last in the field of seven, as is her style, through a dawdling three-quarters in 1:37.28, Zenyatta went to work for a sensational estimated final quarter of 22.49 seconds and hit the wire at her peak speed of the race, 40 mph, according to the Trakus timing system.\" That\'s as brillant as any horse ever.

[HP]

I am denying this.  Sekrah since YOU are ALREADY living in a box, it would probably be too crowded if I moved in there with you.  

The money being overbet on Borel\'s mounts is not coming from NEW PLAYERS.  This is your original premise.  That \"new bettors\" are doing this.  You don\'t know what you\'re talking about.  Just complete nonsense.  Read this article link below.  There are no \"new bettors\" playing Calvin Borel.  The handle at Churchill is way down.  I can\'t BLAME this on Calvin Borel, but your idea that he is attracting new players is obviously wrong.  Maybe they are just watching and cheering and not betting?!?  

http://www.churchilldowns.com/news/archives/churchill-downs-request-reduced-racing-dates-stakes-purses-2009-spring-meet

What you are describing with Borel\'s mounts taking money happens ALL THE TIME.  Jockeys routinely move in and out of fashion.  You do go to the track, right?

I love Borel too, because the people that bet primarily on JOCKEYS are the people who provide the money that TG players end up winning.

[jimbo66]

Dana666,

You again talk about Rachel not racing against good horses.  Are you kidding me?  Even the most overzealous fan of Zenyatta wouldn\'t say that Rachel has faced lesser horses than Zenyatta.  Rachel has won at 6 or 7 tracks this year, against colts twice, and against very fast horses and decimated them.  I am not a \"fan\" of Rachel, to be honest I have bet against her in many of her races, looking for her to \"react\" to all the  big figs.  But she is just great.  Period.  The numbers don\'t point to this year\'s 3 year old colts being slow.  They don\'t.  The illusion of this year\'s class being so mediocre is because she is crushing them, regardless of the trip she gets.  She is not a \"need the lead\" type.  She can make her own pace, or track a very fast pace set by Grade 1 animals like Munnings, and then just kick by.

Yes, I agree that I would love to see Quality Road race against Rachel.  Quality Road is the best 3 year old colt out there, I believe.  I could make a meaningless argument that I Want REvenge was in that class prior to the injury, but since he will never be the same, the point is meaningless.

But Munnings, Summer Bird, Papa Clem, Pioneer of the Nile, Mine that Bird, Musket Man, Big Drama and Take the Points are all better than every single horse that Zenyatta has beaten this year, with the POSSIBLE exception of Life is Sweet.

And your fractional times at the end of the Clement Hirsh don\'t mean much relative to strength of competition.  As you point out, plastic and dirt are different and plastic resembles turf with the late acceleration.  I have seen many slow paced graded turf races at 1 1/4 or classic distances where turf horses kick home in 22 and change off of dawdling paces.  

In the end, Zenyatta has done NOTHING extraordinary this year.  Granted, because of Shirreffs, she hasn\'t had the chance to, but the fact is that Sunday\'s race was not extraordinary.  It was a nice race.

[MonmouthGuy]

I am not going to comment on whether Calvin Borel brings more people to the track, because I have no idea; however, I cannot deny the fact that in a sport where most riders are anonymous pinheads to the betting public, the general public loves and bets Borel.

At the Haskell prep this year (Long Branch Stakes), Borel was riding an Asmussen horse that few had never heard of.  In a field with a Grade 1 winner (Papa Clem) and the most popular jockey/trainer combo at the shore (Breen/Bravo-Atomic Rain), the walk from the paddock to the main track was silent, except for a loud explosion of cheers for Borel and his horse (Omnicient (?))  The horse had little chance and was a definite underlay because of Borel.

For whatever you think of him (and I am neutral), he has become a cultural phenomonon, which can never be bad for a sport on life support.

[HP]

I agree with you 1,000% MGuy.  Here\'s what sekrah wrote

\"You don\'t like jockeys who attract fans (new bettors) to the game?
Along with being outrageously bitter, you\'re a real smart guy too huh?\"

So first off it\'s kind of insulting (he was addressing this to someone else, but still) and the second thing is...he wrote (new bettors).  You are talking about FANS and there is something to this.  There is NO indication whatsoever that this translates into new bettors and there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary...  

HP

[miff]

I quote: \"Last in the field of seven, as is her style, through a dawdling three-quarters in 1:37.28, Zenyatta went to work for a sensational estimated final quarter of 22.49 seconds and hit the wire at her peak speed of the race, 40 mph, according to the Trakus timing system.\" That\'s as brillant as any horse ever.

Dana,

I would just say that on dirt, a 22.49 last quarter is freakish, but not on turf or poly which are run over,not powered thru, like dirt. Agree, it\'s very fast but not as extreme as you are suggesting,imo.

Zenyatta is a terrific mare but has not run as fast as Rachel, faced nothing so far, and Rachel did hook Big Drama for the best part of 7f in the Preakness. In a dirt race with a big pace Z may be able to run a very fast fig, but we may never know.I beleive Z may be a faster fig horse on dirt, judging from her win at OP.

I would step out if Rachel faced a healthy Quality Road as to my thinking that would be a herculean task for her.


Mike


Mike

[TGJB]

That\'s it for the knife fighting, guys. HP didn\'t get to have the last word with Miff, so he gets it here. Anything else on this comes down. Jimbo, I sympathize and basically agree, but that\'s it.

[Frank]

Which part of this nonsense do you sympathize and basically agree with? Which part not so much?