Oxbow, D. Wayne Lukas and Gary Stevens have teamed up to commit a little highway robbery.  No doubt Lukas delivered a fit enough colt to win the race, congrats to him;  no doubt Gary Stevens gave him a trip that gave him the maximum chance to win.   So to those guys I say “great jobe and well done!”   But the story is much more interesting than that.

Here are some questions that we have to ask:

1) “What happened to ORB?”

2) “Whyd did Goldencents fold like a ‘cheap suit” (as the expression goes)?”

3) “What happened at Pimlico that the rail was so desperately BAD?”

4) What happened to other pace players, were they sleeping?”

I will do a post race analysis on Tuesday, but let me start by saying, that Joel Rosario rode Orb just fine, Orb BOUNCED and had slow footing on the dead rail!”  I can’t tell you if he bounced because the bad footing on the dead rail took the starch out of him or if when he started to move up to horses, he couldn’t muster enough to keep his pace going — just as he did in the KD and FD…  This is the reality of BOUNCING, sometimes horses just race good and look good andcontinue to  train good but wile making a lovely move they go flat…   We see it all the time, but so many of us like to ascribe what we see to the jockey or some other factor.   It’s just the reality of horse racing — so now you know why Chad Brown decided to skip the Preakness and bring Normandy Invasion back later on…