ROTW

[TGJB]

Rebel.

[phil23]

Massive weight break, fantastic 2yo pattern leading to fast top, the other fast ones marooned outside, not the favourite, jock who likes to save, decent trainer (lol), and...will not be the fave.

[JoseOcon]

Nice! time to make some money, I want to go shopping

[toppled]

Until proved otherwise, every horse who ran in the Remsen is a bet against.  It\'s one of the biggest negative-key races I\'ve seen in years.

[SOUTHERN SLEW]

I would like to take this opportunity to highly commend the Thorograph team for their outstanding handicapping in last weeks San Felipe Stakes -- Grade II Santa Anita, Race 7, March 9, 2013. Your analysis of the race was excellent and it was a great opportunity to learn how to use the numbers to dissect and isolate the winner at great odds, its never easy beating the favorite in a major stake race, but what I admire best about your style of handicapping is that you always  try to find value and horses that are overlays, you seem to have the ability to always  select the horse that the track handicapper and the public overlooks.
I have learned a lot from your weekly ROTW analysis, it has help me to improve my own handicapping plus better appreciation for your sheets which I have been using for many years now.
Thanks again, I was able to hit the exacta and the triple in that race

[TreadHead]

Think we\'ve already had this discussion at length on this board, it is far too early to dismiss the Remsen as a negative key.  You are buying into runaway public hype that is not rooted in any reasonable statistical analysis.

You have 3 horses from the Remsen worth discussing, one of them ran a poor race back this year, one of them ran a hugely buried effort that was as fast as Super99 or any West Coast effort this year, and the third is Delhomme who races for the first time today.  That is hardly enough data to draw any sort of conclusion, and the data that does exist is split 50/50 against the thesis.

If Delhomme runs poorly today (which might be due to some physical problem given the long layoff as opposed to strength of the Remsen) and NormandyInv runs poorly in his net outing, then you would have the statistical data to make such a statement.  Until that happens, it is baseless hot air.

[miff]

Fair assessment Thread, re the Remsen.Re \"the hugely buried effort\" of NI, good luck with that on no less than several racing levels.Expecting NI to show much better on his preferred Aqu strip come the Wood. Did not come close to running as racetrack fast as SNN in his empty phony wide fig\'d race at FG.

[TreadHead]

I agree that NI would not have caught SNN putting their last races together due to the easy lone lead SNN was able to get.  But we will learn a lot more about him today, where there is no possible way he will get an uncontested early lead to nurse around the track, and this is likely to be the case for all remaining races up to the Derby.  Under those conditions, and the way NI was closing at FG, I like NI much better in the upcoming preps.

[miff]

Thread,

Don\'t disagree with any of that, just stating that NI\'s last fig is lofty relative to the lack of running he did in the Risen Star.

And yes,like SNN, they all look good loose on the lead running off the screen.For example,Pletcher firster, Zaikov(3 yr old out of fast turf mare Wait A While)ran a Beyer of 99(like TG 1.25)at 6f, Gulf yesterday.


Mike

[toppled]

I\'m not buying into any public hype, I\'m just looking at the Remsen chart on Formulator & I find the following results on the horse\'s position in the Remsen & each subsequent race:
1st-5th
2nd-5th
4th-4th
5th-3rd, 2nd
6th-5th
7th-9th, 5th
9th-5th, 5th
That\'s 0 for 10 among the horses who have raced back.  If Delhomme was running in an Opt 75k like the only horse to even hit the board, 5th place finisher Indy\'s Illusion has done, he might have a shot to win, but he\'s in a Grade II stake today.  
When I see horses coming back that poorly out of a race, it goes into the negative-key category. It\'s been almost 4 months already & nobody has come back to do anything. I\'ll let the 1st one to win a race out of the Remsen beat me.  I\'ll bet it\'s in some minor allowance or a claiming race, not a Grade II stakes race.  
I\'m a big football fan, your defense of the Remsen reminds me of the many times my team has had a bad QB and because he was a high draft choice, many fans post on message boards that he just needs more time for the light to come on before the team switches QBs.  4 months is enough time to call a negative-key race a negative-key race.

[phil23]

A high draft choice is based on speculation. Delhomme is based on fact. To be specific, figures. He was faster than anyone in this race...FOUR MONTHS AGO. The long layoff is the one concern, not some phantom negative key race business (and NI ran quite alright besides that). We\'re getting a price (from the sounds of it, maybe even more than just a bit if everyone buys into this neg key race biz) that more than makes up for the concern over the long layoff.

Praying the first ticks on S99 & TB are evens and 5/2.

[TreadHead]

Yeah, I get what the general public is using in that analysis, and it seems highly questionable.  It is an extremely superficial and simplistic view.  The top 3 finished 16 lengths in front of the others, so evaluating what anyone other than the top 3 did in that race is of little value and dilutes what the top 3 actually did.  No one expected anything out of those also-rans and when the gap is that large, whatever they did or did not do later doesn\'t really speak to the ability of the top 3.

The key question at hand here is whether or not those top3 are really as good as the TG figures they earned indicate.  And on that matter, there is only 2 races to go on (one good and one bad), as I already mentioned, and a conclusion cannot be drawn yet.

Also, using what place a horse finished a race in as opposed to the ability/number he actually ran is going to raise chuckles from most handicappers, novice and expert alike.  And on the latter point, Normandy Invasion ran a race quite competitive with most of the other top 3 yr olds regardless of what place he finished in, save Verz and IMLD.

If Delhomme comes out and runs poorly today, then I\'ll start to listen to these points a little more, but as of right now all I hear is people saying that because horses that were beaten 16 lengths in the Remsen never did anything, that race was bad, and because that \"race was bad\" I should ignore the competitive figures, breeding, and pace style I see on the paper in front of me.  To me, that is using voodoo and hype over solid facts, but to each his own.

[TGJB]

Independent of figure correctness questions there is no way to judge any 3yo until he\'s run twice, especially when their trainers are trying to get them to peak in the Derby and last preps for big money.

[jimbo66]

Tread,

By the time you get enough evidence to realize that the Remsen was over-rated, it will be way too late to know that.

The idea is to get ahead of the curve.

Delhomme awful today. Over analyze awful.  And half the people who viewed the Fair Grounds race for Normandy invasion as awful.  (I know u don\'t think so)

[TreadHead]

What\'s wrong with the Fairgrounds race?  The 4th place finisher nearly won this today and was well ahead of several other well-though-of horses today.  Oxbow\'s performance validates Normandy Invasion\'s race, there is simply no other possible way to look at it.

There\'s also no denying that those who took a stand against Remsen horses this spring are doing well with their wagers.  We will see what the post race comments about Delhomme were, because he was eased in the stretch to me means physical problems from the long layoff and not proper to draw any conclusions relating back to the Remsen if he is injured or has some other issue. Could be a classic case of too fast too soon, who knows.

All that said, I still don\'t see any reason to not expect a big race from NI in his next outing, and Oxbow\'s performance today did nothing but strengthen that position.