Wicked Strong

[covelj70]

Pizza,

I\'m not trying to convince anyone of anything. I had alot of people send me texts and emails asking me to post my thoughts so I did.

No one should include or exclude the horse on their tickets because of my views. I have missed on plenty of derby calls.

3 quick points on your post though.

1.  If a horse slow on tgs breezed great ( ie candy boy), I could care less how good  breeze looked but if the horse that is fastest on tgs breezes great, that means something to me. Most time people loose money betting on workouts it\'s because the horse isn\'t fast

2. On the pedigree, it\'s the bottom side of the pedigree that sets this horse apart, not the sire. I posted his catalog page earlier this week. That\'s where the stamina is coming from.

3. Wicked strong sold for 375k as a yearling so think you comments about what the horse would sell for based on looks vs the others is way off.

Good luck

[Bigredgoer]

Jim,
Never had the pleasure to meet you, but always appreciate and look forward to your posts and insights.   If we, as players, can gain an edge anywhere in this game we should take advantage of it.

[pizzalove]

Cov,

1.  Lots of horses with slow figs and a young age suddenly jump to a new high.  Like WS.  If your going to rely on the fastest horses who look good working then good luck with your CC-WS exacta box.  Not earth shattering info but info none the less.

2. I never said the dam side was bad breeding.  It is good.  Actually Hard Spun has also done alright as a sire.  Just not my fave. Always felt he was overrated.  But as you know this is the most inexact science of all.

3.  $375K as a yearling.  Something tells me he probably looks a little different now.  I am sure 2 years ago he may have been the best looker in this bunch.  He isnt now.  Still a good purchase considering.

[covelj70]

Pizza,

Not sure if you bought the tg probables but Cali Chrome isn\'t close to the fastest horse in the race and, in my opinion, has no shot of getting the distance so if he\'s 1st or 2nd, I will lose all my bets next weekend  

He\'s most likely to run second bc that would screw me every way

I would lose my futures bet from jan in Vegas and I will lose all my bets next weeked

When I bet him back in January, he was running big figures compared to the others. I assumed he would move forward as a spring three year old.

The fact that he didn\'t is one of the reasons I think he does have distance limitations. Like many of the others, they are pairing as the distances get longer. Everyone can read sheets and patterns differently and that\'s fine but I want to see horses moving forward on the tgs as the distances get longer.

That\'s how I differentiate between a true route horse and a great horse who is running good numbers as the distances get longer

There is a reason 5 out of the last 7 derby winners had big jumps in their last prep race. CC doesn\'t fit that mold.

[TGJB]

And now I bit it completely off.

One of the really interesting thing about this Derby is different people using the same data are coming up with completely different opinions.

And that\'s even aside from different figure makers having very different data this year, as I\'ve pointed out before.

[covelj70]

Apologies, meant to say 5 out of 8, I was already counting WS in the number....lol

[covelj70]

JB,

Of course

That\'s one of the many things that makes the game great

There\'s nothing wrong with different interpretations on the same data

We do that every day in the stock market.

[P-Dub]

TGJB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And now I bit it completely off.


Thanks for the Sons Of Anarchy flashback.

[TGJB]

Pretty sure I don\'t want to know, and as sure not what I meant.

[covelj70]

I mentioned in my comments about WS breeze that what I liked was that he went off easy and came home strong. Sign of a relaxed, happy horse

See Welsh comments below from DRF about how medal count went out faster than he came home.

Medal Count  (six furlongs in 1:13.25): The Blue Grass runner-up was a bit keen to begin leaving the five-furlong pole but settled into a comfortable stride by the time he entered the turn. Medal Count covered his opening three-eighths in 36.24 and was not pressed to get to the wire in 1:00.41 before continuing on willingly when roused some around the clubhouse bend. He completed his final eighth in a solid 12.64 to the seven-furlong pole before galloping out seven-eighths under mild urging in 1:26.87. Although Medal Count’s best races have come on turf and Polytrack, he worked well on several occasions over the main track this winter at Gulfstream Park but unlike the last three of those works, when he washed out noticeably, and final two during which he  swapped leads well before the wire,  he did not get hot and switched leads on cue this morning. Seems to be thriving now despite having kept a very busy schedule of late.  

This is the kind of thing i am on the lookout for to see if a horse is recovered from his/her last race. Whether its a pair of a big number, a 1 pt top, a 3 point top or a 7 pt top.

I don\'t like medal count anyway for this race because I believe he\'s a turf and a poly horse and the spacing of these races is terrible. This is the kind of breeze that suggests its all catching up to him. I was very vocal on the board about how much I liked him for the Transylvania and the blue grass but I don\'t like him at all for this race

[TGJB]

I have mentioned this before-- about the only thing Michael Dickinson and I ever agreed about was that when horses run really big races, they often come out of the race looking great. After the next one (when they often run poorly) they often come out looking tired.

Recently it has turned out there\'s something else Michael and I agree about, he\'s fighting the good fight on drugs too.

[jbrown007]

Jim I agree with your logic on horses running faster as the distance gets longer as a way to evaluate a \"true distance horse\" but I am positive you will be very disappointed if you think California Chrome will not hit the board for a few reasons.
A) four horses have ran back to back beyers of 105 going into derby since 2003. Smarty-winner big brown-winner empire maker-second. California chrome. Those horses faired pretty well
B) it\'s kind of hard to gauge California\'s true speed figure/thoro # and if he is truly improving when he is getting physically restrained before the race is over.His last to races have been cupcakes. We don\'t know his true potential. He is closing sub 13 while being restraint.
Let\'s not forget his bad break in last race and the way he responded.
C) most importantly California has the tactical speed to get the ideal trip to match his top figures. Trips similar to Brown, Barbaro, Smarty , pletchers horse who won a few years ago. I always think people are crazy to use horses without much tactical speed as their key horse when there are so many issues that could happen in the derby when you have to pass 10 horses.

Whether he wins or not there is no doubt California chrome is the key horse atb and hope a bomb beats him.
Just another mans opinion. Good luck

[pizzalove]

I dont even know what to think about Medal Count.  Nice horse with some ability but his race spacing scares the crap out of me.

[covelj70]

Again, that\'s what makes the game great

People can have legitimate differences of opinion.

There have been enough horses that have jumped up in race before the Derby and then have run well in Derby that its obviously not something that can be approached with a \"one size fits all\" framework

Every horse and every situation is different

There are too many variables that can impact the analysis for anyone to apply the same framework to every horse

Just one example. Does anyone know which horses had legal vet work done before the last race which might have made them more comfortable and allowed them to run better?

I certainly don\'t know But maybe one of the horses that jumped up 7 points had legit vet work done to fix something that was bugging him and that\'s why he improved. He\'s less likely to react to the number.

No one knows these things about every horse and so to say any horse that jumped up a certain amount is going to react is simply pretending to know something that is unknowable. We can say \"it\'s all about percentages\" but its not because the horses that jumped up could have all jumped up for different reasons. Vet work, a track or distance that suited them better, change in running style, blinkers, no blinkers, etc

To apply the same framework to all horses that jump up when all the jump ups could be for different reasons is not a good idea.

That\'s why evaluating the horse in person is, in my opinion, significantly more valuable than numbers of a piece of paper

The numbers tell me which horses are fast. That is incredibly valuable and why i love the tgs. The rest is meaningless to me.

[covelj70]

Thanks for the thought 007

I don\'t think beyer figures are worth the paper they are printed on

TG had all of those horses very very fast

TG has a very differentiated view on CC speed figures and when it comes to the absolute numbers, in JB I trust

Others on the board will say thats crazy and that\'s fine, totally fine to disagree. That\'s why we all get to put up our own money

Thanks again for thoughts and good luck