i think somewhere along the way the crux of my and p-dub\'s difference opinion and what the point we where discussing got lost--no doubt because my posts are always too long.
p-dub and i didn\'t differ on the fact that orb didn\'t run his race, we only differed on why. my opinion is that he never had a shot once rosario made the decision to keep him inside of other horses along the inside of the track--that he had a bad ride due to jockey error, based on the fact that once commiting to an inside race, rosario then balked at taking orb up the rail once he bridged the gap to oxbow and goldencents between the mile pole & the 3/4 pole, getting him boxed in, and allowing titletownfive to take the only path open to hm at that point. p-dub disagreed and felt that rosario had not choice with he trip he gave orb and that he didn\'t take back, rather orb backed up..
i\'ve never said orb ran a competitive race, in fact i said just the opposite--the only difference is that i\'m not willing to say it was a bounce, becuaaue he wasn\'t given an opportunity to run his race. the outcome may have been the same even with any outside trip, in which case a bounce would seem the most likely explanation, but given that the only horse that was able to make up any ground was mylute who had the widest trip all race, it is just as reasonable to conclude the path taken was the culprit.
not sure how that equates with fabrication, which is a synonym for lying. also, a little confuse with mjellish\'s reply, given he felt going into the race that the one hole could seriously compromise orb, unless rosario got him out wide early.
the one thing that i\'d like to apologize for is that in discussing orb\'s ride i did get all confused with the lengths--conflating his distance from oxbow to is distance to departing. that was just sloppy on my part.
here\'s what seems unconstestable about the preakness to me:
orb made a move between the mile pole and the 3/4 pole that bridged the distance between himself and the two leaders.
orb got boxed in at this point and began to back up.
despite backing up, for whatever reason one chooses to attribute this to, he never was caught or passed by the horses behind him, and he caught and passed the two horses in front of him that he was closest to--even if this was because they came back to him, he could only have done this if he was moving faster than they were at that point, which would indicate he had more left in the tank than one of the freshest horses in the race, which is inconsistent with a conclusion that he backed up on the far turn due to being empty.
four horses clearly did not run their race, 4 horses seemed to have run their race, and one horse may or may not have run his race. i haven\'t timed each horse from the top of the stretch yet, but it is just as likely that mylute made up ground because itsmylucky day and oxbow came back to him, as it is that his accelaration caught them. for a fast front running horse to run the fractions he did, it is arguable that even oxbow didn\'t really run his race, but was lucky enough to take a lead on a track that wasn\'t conducive to making up ground.
every horse that ran inside for any length of time seemde to stall out--departing made a nice move on the outside on the turn for home, is taken inside and starts running in place. goldencents who ran outside the whole race didn\'t run out of steam as much as departing did.
i agree that based on the race run, orb was never in contention--i\'ve never argued otherwise--i just disagree as to why.
i\'ll leave you guys alone about this now =)
