Curious as to what key themes resonate with others after the last two days of betting. A couple things come to mind for me:
1. Certain trainers had truly disgraceful performances. Hard to imagine any trainer doing worse than Baffert did over the two days. Not a single horse he had ran close to decent, not just in the BC races, even on the undercards. (Sorry, Exec Privilege ran sub-par, despite finishing 2nd.) For Game on Dude to not even show up at any point in the race was just ridiculous. Ditto his horses in the BC Juvenile, the BC Sprint, etc.etc. Another trainer that was awful, and pointed out by TGJB in the seminar, was Kiaran Mclaughlin. Granted, he didn\'t have as many horses as Baffert, but he runs Questing, who refuses to run a step, then follows it up with Emcee, who quits after a half, on a big speed favoring track. Pletcher was not as bad as the top two, but pretty ugly performances by Dreaming of Julia and Kaui Kate. (offset by a gutty, albeit slow, win by Shanghai Bobby). There is another thread here with supposition about why these trainers couldn\'t get horses to run, so I won\'t go into that again, but it is one thing to lose, but it is a completely different thing to have horses with great form, fast figures not run a step at any point in a race. Very hard to swallow.
2. Alright, point 1 was my \"bitter\" point, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, I can\'t help but feel great for the low profile connections who had great days. Charlie Lopresti with Wise Dan who is just some kind of horse. He absolutely trounced that top class field of milers, in an extremely fast time (yes, I know the turf was hard, but the win seemed effortless). Also, Brian Hernandez holding off Mike Smith in the Classic with Fort Larned. Having no \"skin in the game\" with my bets toast by the far turn, I found myself rooting home Hernandez rather than see Mike Smith winning.
3. I run the risk of getting P-Dubbed with this post, but Mike Smith remains a mystery to me. Other than Desmormeaux, I can\'t think of another jockey that has a wider gamut of disparity with the quality of his rides. He wins the Ladies Classic by getting the best horse (who has no sign of early speed) on the lead, over a speedy track, when he realizes that the Kiaran horse didn\'t leave and he has a chance to grab the top. Great move. The race was basically over. Also, a pretty damn good ride on Mucho Macho Man, getting a great stalking position from the far outside post, in a race with a few other riders looking for that position. But then, he gives what I think may be one of the dumbest rides I have ever seen on Atigun. WTF was he thinking? Granted, I am bit biased, as I have an out of work friend who was live to a pick-5 paying 11k for 50 cents with Atigun, but really, he takes a plodder and decides to attack a fast pace when they are going 1 3/4 miles? Just horrific.
4. The thing I try to get out of these events most is handicapping lessons. Not sure what I learned this year. As for my own wagering, I am going to significantly downgrade clocker data in these types of events going forward. Interesting stuff for 1st time starters and layoff horses, but not so relevant maybe for these top class horses. Some of the tidbits from a very good clocker that I factored into my own wagering: Game on Dude working better than any horse they had seen. Smiling Tiger didn\'t belong in the race. Trinniberg not working well. Nonios working lights out. Fed Biz working extremely well. Mizdirection no good off the layoff. Power Broker sharp as a razor. Capital Account sitting on a big race. There is always the risk of information overload in these events and balancing figures, with workouts, with trainer tendencies, medication issues, etc. is tough to do.
Any other thoughts out there on lessons learned?
