Godolphin

[Flighted Iron]

Rick,

 unfortunately you\'re not far off the mark.Several years back a trainer i know
and was previously employed with was running a horse in the garden state stakes and i decided
to drive up and catch the race.just rolled through the backside gate
and went straight to the detention barn, walked over to the horses stall and started chatting with the groom.not a peep from anyone.funny thing was,here we have 100 million in racetrack and some serious stock on the grounds and i\'m having
my run of the place with an expired racing license and decked out in my phillips
66 uniform.just didn\'t figure.

[alm]

I don\'t doubt your stories, but I\'ve been an owner for 25 years and never got backstretch at ANY track that easily.  In fact, I often get hassled whenever I show up at a stable gate...if not for my license, then it\'s for my hanging car tag...or lack thereof.

[Flighted Iron]

I don\'t doubt you either,but I don\'t understand your point.

[Rick B.]

I didn\'t spice my story up, not one little bit -- promise.

Part of me was relieved that we didn\'t have to go through all of the B.S. that would have been necessary to get unlicensed people on the backstretch...but I was equally alarmed at the ease of entry / access. I was 5 feet away from two different horses that went on to win stakes a few days later -- what if I had malice on my mind? How easy would it have been to toss some illegal crap into a stall and generate a positive for a guy I don\'t like?

(Me? Never, EVER -- even if the trainer was Osama bin Laden, I couldn\'t do that to a horse. But the mind boggles at the possibilities, esp. when there are so many out there that hate and / or are jealous of Dutrow, Asmussen, et. al.)

Granted, it\'s Saratoga: it\'s more relaxed, more open, more \"friendly\". Maybe it\'s not supposed to be as \"locked down\" as other tracks. Maybe my experience is the wild exception. I sure hope so.

[Flighted Iron]

ditto on the spice level.looking back so true how easy the malcontent could
have accessed the premises.somewhat naive to it all,at the time i\'m sure i didn\'t
feel your alarm,but in retospect the ease at which it was accomplished is quite
alarming.still can\'t figure SAB running so well after the repeated shin kickings.

[richiebee]

Josephus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Anybody have any insights into why their horses
> are running these dynamite races off layoffs?  I
> know they have great stock, but they are not
> missing with any of them.  It will be interesting
> to see what happens in their follow-up races.  Who
> gets the credit. is it Mettee or the main stable
> trainer?


As to the follow up races Josephus mentioned, how about Gayego and Giralamo?

I thought it interesting that Josephus\'s post on 9/22 started a string which
gave birth not surprisingly to some of the expected innuendo which arises when
a barn suddenly gets piping hot. I bit my tongue.

Godolphin pays top dollar for horses of racing age. I would imagine they are
given every advantage of equine management that money can buy, which includes
the Greentree Training Center outside of the Saratoga Race Course. The
Godolphin trainers, bin Suroor and Mettee, and their \"feeder\" trainers,
Albertrani and Kiaran McLaughlin, have not accumulated positives at an alarming
rate.

Is the Godolphin operation \"above suspicion\"? What fun would that be.

No one as hot as the TAPper right now, winning with all kinds of horses at Oak
Tree, Keeneland and Belmont. Cue the innuendo in 3..2..1...

[TGJB]

Richie-- exactly (TAP). The point is that when an entire barn wakes up at the same time, it\'s not a coincidence.

For BC bettors, the most important thing that happened this past weekend is that Gayego ran big in California. It\'s worth noting that Music Note and Cocoa Beach also ran well out there last year. Look out.

[covelj70]

JB,

how do you reconcile the Gayego move with the stringent tests in Cali?

thanks

[sighthound]

> Anybody have any insights into why their horses
> are running these dynamite races off layoffs?

I\'d say it\'s because they have made a stable management decision change, and decided to fully utilize the benefits of layoff and rehab (and they have the world-class facilities to do so); realizing that it\'s financially and strategically better to train them into firing first time, rather than racing them into shape (race placement-qualifiers working towards big races, rate of $$ return per race)

[TGJB]

Well, there are two obvious possibilities-- that they are not using anything, or that they are using something that is not being tested for. Same applied to Sadler until recently, now hard to tell.

By the way, Godolphin has always been a good layoff outfit. The difference now is that when they run their tops, their tops are faster. And they don\'t bounce.

[covelj70]

JB

final question from me and then I will move onto to next topic...

...do you know if the testing for the BC is going to be any different from any other day in Cali?

I know there was all the noise about the trainers hearing about different tests on the night before the Derby and certain trainers raising a stink.

Can we expect something like this for the BC or is it going to be testing as normal in Cali for that day?

thanks

[TGJB]

Don\'t know about special testing, they might have said something about that. Cal testing is pretty good, some chance \"special\" testing would make it worse if someone else did it.

[Cartman]

\"Richie-- exactly (TAP). The point is that when an entire barn wakes up at the same time, it\'s not a coincidence.\"

I agree that sometimes a whole barn can get suspiciously hot, but I think just as often there are very logical and even predictable reasons for these fluctuations.

Linda Rice was on fire at Saratoga. Now she\'s not doing so well.

It looked to me like a lot of her horses were primed for peak efforts at Saratoga, she found a lot of good spots to run them in, and had a little racing luck. Now those same horses are already through a few conditions and are running against tougher competition, there are fewer grass sprints being carded, and some of her horses are over the top. I think the Belmont decline was very predictable and have been betting accordingly.  

Pletcher often has a barn full of young tigers. If for some reason many didn\'t get to the track 100% to start the year, then it would be no shock to see many of them explode forward in their next few starts as they all peaked at the same time.  The same would be true of Godolphin.

If memory serves me, Dutrow didn\'t do so well at Saratoga (can\'t really recall). But now he\'s on fire again and moving horses up off his patented two month layoff! I can\'t and won\'t argue that Tricky is playing by the rule book.  But again, I think it was somewhat predictable that his barn would turn around  
at Belmont.
 
Aside from randomness contributing to wins and peak figures, I think horses and sometimes even whole barns are subject to somewhat predictable booms and busts because of form cycles, type of stock, horses moving up and down the class ladder, and race conditions. In fact, I think the nature of the game is that peaks and valleys in a single barn are more likely than a more consistent performance.    

It isn\'t always drugs (just sometimes).

[TGJB]

You are confusing winning races with running fast figures. Good spots and racing luck don\'t affect figures.

[Cartman]

I understand your point and agree.

Though IMO they are related. Experience suggests to me that horses tend to run their best figures when they are spotted properly and not outrun because they are overmatched. If a barn is dropping all its horses into appropriate spots, they will all start running better and faster. Once they win and are forced to move back up they will all tail off again (including figure wise).

Form cycle also plays a huge part in this and can impact an entire barn.

Let\'s say a trainer has a whole string of young high quality horses in a specific location and they all get sick and miss a couple of weeks. He\'s not going to change all his long term plans unless it was a disaster. He\'s still going to ship the horses to wherever he intended. The only difference is that they will all probably be less than 100% in their first couple of starts. Then they will all peak around the same time in their 2nd or 3rd start off a layoff. The same would be true if a bunch missed some training due to bad weather. I\'ve seen this pattern dozens of times with many different trainers of high quality stock like Pletcher and Godolphin. You also see it sometimes with first time starters and second time starters. One year a trainer is winning everything with his first time starters and the next year they are all short a race or two.

More interesting to me is when a trainer moves up an older horse than has been in the hands of other competent trainers.