"Look him in the eye, and he's counterfeit."

[smalltimer]

In the Aug 8 Thoroughbred Times, Musket Man trainer Derek Ryan wasn\'t enamored with Quality Road.

\"If we didn\'t press him, the other horse wouldn\'t have won either.  Look at it on paper.  Quality Road\'s on the inside, he going to go.  The other horse has got to go.  They should be up there. If they were going :22 and :45, I\'d understand him taking back.  But they\'re letting them crawl.  It just goes to show if you press him (QR) a little bit, he\'s not as good as they say he is.  Just look him in the eye and he\'s counterfeit. Even with those fractions, he\'s supposed to win that race yesterday.  I\'ll buy me a rabbit for the next time.\"

[TGJB]

Seriously, you pay attention to crap like that?

[jbelfior]

They certainly looked at him in the eye more than once in the Met Mile not to mention his battle with Summer Bird in the JCGC.

I\'m not enamored with Ryan\'s decision to keep MM going long.


Good Luck,
Joe B.

[smalltimer]

He\'s had 6 Grade 1 races and passed a total of 2 horses.

[smalltimer]

He had at least a 1/2 length lead at every call, so he wasn\'t looking anyone in the eye in that flat mile race.

[nyc1347]

I dont like the way he looked and after the wire this past race.  Blame looked like he could still go with no problem and QR looked exhausted.

[TGJB]

1-- He\'s often on the lead. That makes it a lot harder to pass horses.

2-- Seriously, you posted an opinion from a) a trainer, b) not a top one, c) on the mental makeup, d) of a horse he doesn\'t even train? What did he do, talk to the horse\'s shrink, or would that be privileged?

REALLY? You thought it was worth posting that on THIS board, like it was Moses handing down the tablets? Do you have any idea where you are at all?

[jimbo66]

nyc1347

I don\'t think anybody would disagree that this was not a good race for Quality Road.  He should have run better in the stretch and didn\'t look good after the race.  But there is a big difference between criticizing this horse\'s last race and criticizing this horse in general.  THis is an extremely fast and talented horse that has run extremely fast from 6.5 furlongs to 1 1/4 miles.  That is just fact.  His \"slow\" races trounce most any active horse (including Zenyatta, even on Zenyatta\'s \"dirt top\", so the \"synthetic figures are different argument\" doesn\'t hold a lot of water.

The question with Quality Road is whether this race was a sign he may go off form or not.  (and no, he isn\'t a \"horse for the course\" at Gulfstream, the negative 5 or so in the Met Mile is enough evidence to squash that theory)

On the question of how bad the Whitney race was for Quality Road, it will be interesting to see how TGJB grades the race.  With the caveat that I am not a figure maker, the 111 beyer figure \"seemed\" pretty fast to me, eyeballing the rest of the card.  If TGJB comes in the same range (adjusted for weight and ground loss), perhaps this was not a particularly slow race for Quality Road and Blame just stepped up pretty big.  Although the visual of Quality Road in the stretch off of what seemed like a nice trip, was not good.

[smalltimer]

I figured what Ryan said was just as relevant as Pletcher whining about having to spot the 5 pounds to Blame.  At any rate, his horse got beat after crawling on the front end and that should never have happened.  Something isn\'t right with the horse. All the usual suspects (pace, troubled trip, bad post, etc) should be dismissed.  What other factors come into play?  Nothing other than he\'s never won a race at 10 furlongs or carrying 126#\'s, both of which he\'ll have to overcome if he\'s gonna take the big one at Churchill against a bunch of good horses, with at least 1 and maybe 2 great females to spot weight to.  
He looks like the classic speed horse that has to have the lead. I\'ll agree he\'s almost on the lead which makes it even more disturbing to me that he hasn\'t shown whatever it takes to pass another good horse in races when he doesn\'t have the lead.  
Thought this forum was about horses.  Should I have been commenting on this BASEBALL FORUM about a former great player who\'s been deceased for 30 years?  Or maybe I was confused and forgot I was on a GOLF FORUM for struggling golfers?
Maybe one of the Commandments should be \"thou shalt not wager on any front-running horse that\'s never won at the distance or carried the required weight.\"
Whatever.....

[nyc1347]

My point of view from his pattern read is that if he ran worse than his last effort of negative 5 that he may be simply reacting from the fastest 2 turn effort of all time (the neg 7.5).  All the BC Champs that ran this fast were able to pair and/or be consistently \"in line\" at this redic fast level (ghostzapper, midnight lute, invasor, saint liam, curlin, even barnardini who ran 2nd).  QR may need to show us somewhere close to a top effort so we have at least some kind of indication that the Neg 7.5 didnt effect him forever.  also keep in mind that with a lot of rest from the neg 7.5 that he bounced 2 points... with less rest he may have (which we will see) run even slower this past race.  I think he ran about a Neg 3-4 or so this past race. If that is the case, as much as that may be faster than many horses who are running theres no point of expecting him to fire well when he keeps going backwards from his best race this year.  The projection of his next couple starts to me would not be good at all.

[TGJB]

Seriously Part II-- you just said that what some guy said about the psyche of the horse is as relevant as one about spotting 5 pounds? For real?

Again, DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE? It\'s not \"a forum about horses\". There are lots of those, you should go to one. It\'s the Thoro-Graph site, for serious students of handicapping. We use performance figures here. They factor in weight. 5 pounds at that distance is worth just under 2 lengths.

[jbelfior]

RUFFIAN never passed a horse in her life......what\'s your point?

Good Luck,
Joe B.

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- I have it roughly the same as Beyer. They don\'t use ground or weight, but they basically offset in this case for QR-- high weight but saved ground.

I had the track getting slower, but it was also the only two turn race so you have to do it off the horses in that race anyway. As it happens it fit with the previous 1 turn race the way I did it, with Blame pairing up.

The big question is what the effect of all these big efforts are on a horse with soundness issues. It would be a question even without them. But his losing effort was better than the winning efforts of pretty much everyone else this year aside from Rachel.

A point to keep in mind is that if Rachel or Z go against colts in the BC they will be getting weight.

[alm]

Hey, maybe QR\'s small intrinsic muscles were out of whack...maybe he needs some cross-training.  Or maybe you don\'t know what you\'re talking about.

Seriously, he\'s a fast horse, but that\'s it.  He had a mediocre effort (by his standards.)  He was beaten by a nice horse who put a couple of high level efforts together.

Secreatariat lost the Wood Memorial and then annihilated the best of his generation.  I don\'t think you would have been on firm ground questioning his psyche or his future AT THAT POINT.

Quality Road ain\'t Secretariat, but hold on to your money, betting against him.

[marcus]

I\'m taking a \'we will see going forward in the future attitude \' . I didn\'t believe he\'d run a top or secondary effort but thought QR would be good enough still to handle the competition .

He looked to me heated up  behind the gate pre-race and didn\'t see the replay but I don\'t recall the horse really being asked for anything by the Jockey in the lane . ..