Meanwhile...

[Paolo]

I will wait for the Preakness thoro-patterns, especially after considering all of the resounding endorsements.

[sekrah]

Mylute looks most interesting to me.  Probably moved forward a point or two.  Not impossible to pair up in two weeks.  Don\'t think he\'d be a huge price though with Rosie at Pimlico.  Oxbow probably didn\'t outrun himself either.  If they decide to run IMLD, I\'ll be paying very close interest to his training next week.

[jbelfior]

Amos not sure if he\'s running back.Looks as if no Pletcher and of course D Wayne will be there with WTC and Oxbow.
Looks as if NI is definitely out and GC will try again.

Good Luck,
Joe B.

[SteveB]

From Mike Welsch on Twitter:

Plesa says Itsmyluckyday came back 100 per cent did not handle track on way to Monmouth 60-40 to run in Preakness.

[bloodline]

JB you\'re exactly right.  The Preakness is consistently the most formful race of the year to the Derby form run 14 days prior. These horses run the race of their life at a distance too far and come right back and do it again in 2 weeks sometimes with even higher figs.  The new shooters generally don\'t make an impact. How can that be?  Why don\'t the Derby horses bounce to the moon?  

IMO it\'s because we\'ve all forgotten what the old time trainers knew - when you get a horse right you run them.  I have horses in England and I can assure you they have not forgotten it there. When horses win they often run right back in 2-14 days.  Why?  Because if you wait too long they go out of form. We call it \"bouncing\" or \"reacting\" but what we\'re really talking about is form cycles. Of course many horses do react to a big fig but it\'s NOT immediate. Look at the Keeneland meet.  The \"repeater\" angle has been tried and true for decades. There were 3 in one day including the Lexington stakes this past meet.

The reason the Preakness is so formful is if you run them back quick enough they don\'t bounce. And that\'s why there are so few Triple Crown winners. They can\'t hold that form for 5 weeks.  If you want more Triple crown winners run them over a shorter time period - say 7 and then 14 days.

Now you will probably point out that many Derby winners don\'t run new tops. It would be interesting to see of Derby starters who run new tops and go back in the Preakness how many bounce. I think you\'ll see a lot of pair-ups.  My unscientific observation is that when you run them quick they run the same.

bloodline

[jimbo66]

BBB,

Perhaps I could slightly alter the words I used, but he isn\'t a distance horse, and if he runs again, my bet will be that his connections won\'t even try him long.

Really talented horses, with distance limitations, can go longer if they get a great trip, such as stalking a 50 pace.  This is very much what Verrazano did in the Wood.  Despite some good heated debate on this board, it is pretty clear the general public correctly disagnosed the Wood as a definitive sign the horse had distance limitations.  Before the Wood, if you would have told me that he was going to win the Wood, I would have said he would have been a solid 5-2 favorite to win the Derby, with plenty of support.  Instead, he stands at double digit odds early, before getting some moderate late support.  He has to stalk a fast pace and packs it in before the mile mark.

[Flighted Iron]

hoping GS ran in the 1 territory. re-check sire profile possible 5pts from 2-3.
trying to think forward here. most dead money will see GS as a fluke and possibly get double digits for a live horse. If he does earn a 1 for the Derby
i can\'t see not betting him back. Lightly raced with a two year old foundation
and imo sitting on a very possible pair with a slight possible slight new top.

[vp612]

Well here are the 2 new shooters Gov. charlie and departed,both with nice rest and Charlies line was nice going in to the derby.

[TGJB]

Bloodline-- this is an interesting subject, no doubt.

First off, it\'s a little different in England because they race (mostly) on grass. For whatever reason horses are far more likely to pair good efforts on grass, and in general bounce a lot less. Explanatory theories include slower pace on grass (especially relative to the \"speed\" of the track, generally much faster on grass) allowing horses to run more evenly (no explosive bursts), and a more forgiving surface.

But yes, even on dirt there are lots of examples of trainers getting paired big efforts on short rest-- many times in the Preakness, and on some famous occasions much less than 2 weeks (Onion beating Secretariat, Comquistador Cielo romping in the Belmont 5 days after winning the Met, Dutrow fairly often).

Having said that, a) it doesn\'t always work, and b) the horse almost always pays a price. It took Onion over a year to run again, for example, and there\'s the record of horses going for the TC-- which I don\'t think is a function of having too much time before the Belmont.

[vp612]

CON/CIELO had run a met mile In 133 and change and caught a track that was as sloppy as it could get. I can still see the rain pouring down.Stopped cold in the Travers mot a true 1-1/4,1-1/2 horse by any stretch.

[TGJB]

You may be right. OR... he was cooked by then, by running those big ones close together.

[vp612]

I just think he caught a perfect track in the Belmont.In those days it just seemed on sloppy days that the speed was deadly.I think he won by 15 lengths.

[bellsbendboy]

Jim I guess we will agree to disagree.

By any measure, Verrazano is extreme quality at least up to nine panels.

Your raising the Wood as reason why he is NOT a distance horse is not
helping your puzzling opinion.  Verrazano\'s last three furlongs in the Wood time wise is as fast as sophomores can run.

bbb

[TreadHead]

And dismissing a horse\'s distance ability because he had a poor race over a track surface where the jockey described as the horse\'s action as having to \"overwork\" is equally puzzling.  Of course he tired quickly in the race, he had to run twice as hard as he normally does early on because he couldn\'t grip the surface.

He may fail at 10F for injury reasons, or as some have said, never even run another race.  But there is nothing in his prior figures or pace/energy distribution to suggest that he could not run a negative number at distance over a track he can actually run over with normal action/effort if he can get to another race in one piece.  Whether or not that will be good enough to win will depend on how much further some in this crop improve.

For all the beating Verrazano has taken on being fragile and over-extended, that discussion will be turning directly to Orb as soon as these figures come out.  If one negative can knock Verrazano out, will be interesting to see what opinions surface about Orb\'s run of figures.

[richiebee]

>
> For all the beating Verrazano has taken on being
> fragile and over-extended, that discussion will be
> turning directly to Orb as soon as these figures
> come out.  If one negative can knock Verrazano
> out, will be interesting to see what opinions
> surface about Orb\'s run of figures.

The key difference possibly being Orb\'s 2YO foundation,
and Verrazano\'s lack of one...