Bore In Bore Out

[alm]

OK, so I\'m a simple minded slug...I didn\'t like any of the bore-in bore-out horses and said so.  My goodness, they all came up short in this one.  I didn\'t like Arch because his trainer...well, his trainer took the big shot in Arkansas, which is home, and didn\'t have much horse left (and I take his stumble and injury as proof of that).  I hated Pants on Fire, what a joke, because I haven\'t seen Kelly Breen step up to this level yet.  What was left I bet in the final P4 of the day and just missed by leaving a longshot off one of my ticket iterations...had all 4 final winners, but not on one ticket.

Prediction: Animal Kingdom bore out pretty good in the Derby...won\'t win the Preakness...Asmussen did a great job training Nehro off a vigorous schedule and likely has an improving horse coming into the next one.  The idea of saying he has seconditis is pretty silly...he beat Arch 2 steps after the wire in Arkansas meaning he wanted to be on top.  He wins the Preakness if there are no new shooters capable of stepping up.

Worst horsemanship decision in the Derby, connections of Comma.  Worst training in the Derby, Dale Romans sharpening a speed horse for the longest race of his life.  Worst ride in the Derby, probably Calvin.

[MonmouthGuy]

I disagree on Romans. I don\'t see any other way that Shak could have won the race than the way he ran it.  Set reasonable fraction and rebroke when Nehro tested him at the top of the stretch and held him off initially.  Wasn\'t good enough at 10F but couldn\'t have run better IMHO. Romans had him ready.

[jbelfior]

Alm:

Doesn\'t look like Nehro is going.  



Good Luck,
Joe B.

[miff]

Al,

Agree,in that AK did shift out after JV hit him lefty deep stretch, after that though did not see much bearing. Even if he did, 1st race in 6 weeks, going that far with 126 may have caused him to be tiring and wandering a bit.Maybe gets a bo, but not sure it\'s relevant in this instance.

Fresh new shooters in the Preakness,a whole other story, with several appearing to have more upside than a majority of the slugs in the Derby.


Mike

[Caradoc]

My nomination for the worst ride goes to Joel Rosario on Brilliant Speed.  BS broke from the 2-hole, and secured a great spot on the rail heading into the first turn.  For some reason, Rosario decided that this was the time to shift him out to start his first run, so that by the time BS hit the backstretch he was in the 4-path.  Inexplicable.  Heading into the far turn, Rosario decided it was time to start his second run and steered him outside of Animal Kingdom into the 5-path, even though there was a pocket inside to sit in and wait to tip out at some point.

[alm]

If you are correct that only confirms my feeling that Asmussen showed great horsemanship in the way he prepared Nehro.  He\'s not killing the horse and will have a lot more horse down the road...a big one to watch.

As for Dale Romans handling Shack the best way he could, I was referring to the 58 and change workout.  I\'m sorry, but that\'s not the way to prep a horse for the big race.  We might all think the fractions were reasonable in this race, but Shack made mincemeat out of Comma, a pretty fast horse himself...when I saw that developing in the backstretch it was clear Shack was soup.

And I guess the reason I made my comment about Calvin was influenced by his ride in the next race, when he took a 7-5 favorite out as fast as he could to get to the rail in a sprint.  He does that over and over, just like his Derby rail rides.  On this day, however, the rail wasn\'t a special place to be.  A smart jockey would have figured that out by the 12th race and ridden the race differently.  The question is: in the long run is it better to be smart or brave?

[Lost Cause]

alm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> And I guess the reason I made my comment about
> Calvin was influenced by his ride in the next
> race, when he took a 7-5 favorite out as fast as
> he could to get to the rail in a sprint.  He does
> that over and over, just like his Derby rail
> rides.  On this day, however, the rail wasn\'t a
> special place to be.  A smart jockey would have
> figured that out by the 12th race and ridden the
> race differently.  The question is: in the long
> run is it better to be smart or brave?

Hey Aim,
If I remember correctly that horse only has one gear, it seems that would have happened no matter who rode him.

[alm]

As one old time trainer told me, years ago, you don\'t push the button on a horse like that until you have to.  Calvin was hustling him right out of the gate just to get to the rail, where not too many prospered on Saturday.  

If I hadn\'t seen him do it over and over in sprints I would just shut up.  But he does it to a fault if he can and he invariably uses horses up, whether they have a frontrunning style or no.  Just watch him some time.  

Calvin on a horse backing up in a sprint destroys the heroic image of his railrunning Derby wins...but what this says about him reminds me of the Emerson quote (paraphrased here: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind...fits Calvin to a \'t\')

[alm]

Jerry indicates in a post above he\'s giving a dead rail on Saturday...kind of what I thought was happening...further questioning Calvin\'s ride in that race...if a small stiff like me can tell you don\'t want the rail by the 12th race on a given day, from a thousand miles away, how big a stiff is the jockey who\'s actually ridden over it all day?

[bellsbendboy]

Calling Calvin a stiff and/or qestioning his knowledge of Churchill Downs seems a bit harsh, especially using the last two races/rides as examples.

In the Derby, Calvin rode a horse that could not get a mile and a quarter in the back of a Sallee van; and in the twelfth his horse ran EXACTLY the kind of race he always runs. bbb

[alm]

Look, we\'re all entitled to our opinion and I respect yours.  However, Calvin Borel\'s choices in most races are very limited.  If he can, he goes to the rail, regardless of the wisdom of the move.  

He credits Carl Nafzger with having taught him to get to the rail at Churchill and stay on the rail if at all possible.  He rides that way to a fault, regardless of situations and possibilities.  

When it works out, watch out, but very few top level jockeys are that unidirectional.  Borel rode that horse to Borel-perfection, using a high turn of speed to gain the rail...which made no sense given it was a one-turn race.  Particularly as the rail was playing deep and tiring; witness the earlier races...and I will bet he didn\'t pay attention to them.  If he was capable of making a decent judgment in that situation he would have tried to let others go on first, inside him.  But no, it didn\'t matter the rail was slow that day, it didn\'t matter how fast he had to go from the gate to get the rail, it only mattered to him that he could get it, so he did get it...and took his horse out of the race.

I think Borel is a great one-dimensional jockey...unfortunately not every situation calls for the single dimension he has perfected over his career.  he pulled off a feat winning 3 Derbies using EXACTLY this strategy and you can\'t take it away from him.  However, all things being equal (meaning the horses) he will lose most of the time to the premier riders in this country.

[Silver Charm]

Well said Miff! This horse had 4 career starts under his belt and 160,000 people in the stands while having navigated a mile and quarter with weight.

Whatever shifting out seemed to be followed by a shifting back in judging by that overhead view post in the Derby/Oaks figure Link!!

[jbelfior]

Calvin Borel is arguably the most overrated athlete in his profession. His performances in the Derby were no different than those of Phil Sims and Eli Manning..........good quarterbacks who performed well in a Super Bowl and were/are vastly overrated.

Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning are great QB\'s who accomplished the same. To mention Sims and Eli in the same sentence with those 2 is foolish. Same if you mention Borel in the same sentence as Bailey or Cordero.


Good Luck,
Joe B.

[alm]

You may be right...it\'s hard to say why a horse bears out...maybe he was running away from the whip, but this seemed more gradual to me and not a reaction to the stimulus.  In any case, there\'s no way I could bet him next out...if I\'m right, there\'s a chance they won\'t run him once they get a load of him back on the track...Motion is the kind of guy who seems to try to do the right thing.