Some impressions from the 3 Preps from yesterday.

What happened on Saturday, what did we see?  Let’s start with The Bluegrass, we saw as expected a forward racing Further Ado as he demolished a field of mediocre horses.  They looked mediocre to me – noting the very low numbers I assigned them – which are always based on what they ACTUALLY ran in their prior races.   Further Ado rated out at least 4 lengths faster and won by 11 lengths, suggesting he ran forwardly.  The time on the clock was promising a real good effort on his part… in a few days, I will confirm the speed of the track and if the effort was as forward as I think it might have been.

The Wood Memorial seems to be another disappointment in a long line of disappointing Wood Memorials.  When I started horse racing, the Wood was the Prep on the East Coast.  I watched Secretariat get beat by his stable mate in the Wood and a tour de force by Seattle Slew in winning the Wood without even trying.  But over the rest of my 50 years of playing the ponies, the Wood has become less and less important, it’s actually become a sort of Negative Indicator.  Crazy as it sounds, I think you can find a KD winner who prepped in New Mexico more recently than any horse that used the Wood Memorial to prep for the Kentucky Derby.  It’s as if, New York racing- for the Kentucky Derby – is an out of the way, small town, off the beaten track.

WE have seen some really good performances this season, Renegade in the Ark Derby and Commandment and The Puma in the Florida Derby, but those are the only ones I have seen so far that figure on their figures and or visuals… and Further Ado confirms The Puma…

So, let’s discuss So Happy, who came into the Santa Anita Derby with a rating that would likely only win a Non-Winner’s of 1 other than.  I rated him at 71.0.  What he actually ran on my figures we will know in a few days… Typically the Santa Anita Derby is won by a horse that runs faster than a 76.0 ( on my figs)…  He was rated approximately 3 points slower than Potente, Cherokee Nation and Intrepido… but jumped up in form to defeat them as if they were a pedestrian set of runners.  And they were! Still, for a horse to make such a big move forward is great for winning the Santa Anita Derby, but is it a good thing for his next race?  I will withhold my thoughts for a few days… but the word BOUNCE comes right into my mind as a possibility…   I guess we will grapple with that.

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