Delighted:

Well, California Chrome has hadpu an exclamation point on what had been a fabulous meeting at Del Mar.  To my eye he certtainly showed comfort on the Turf with his speedy move away from the gate.  And as always, he waits for his instructions fro Victor Espinosa, I certainly liked that — a whole lot.   Then he made his move to the lead, and to my eye it wasn’t as impressive as I have seen in the past and he seemed to need a little urging through the lane — winning while giving back a length or so at the end.  That is something he has been inclined to do in some of his races, so that didn’t color my view.  What did take a little shine off of this effort for me, was that he was urged to get to the lead, and I didn’t see any Bayern’s or Shared Belief or Social Inclusion’s out there,  The filly I had rated at 76.0 and if I was mistaken and  she should have been rated at say 77.5 — that still does not compare to the Bayern or Share Beleif who run better than 79.0 routinely.  In fact, they really want to run over the 80.0 mark…

So I guess my take-away is that he ran okay, beating lesser, while needing a little urging…

Thanks to all of the connections, and Del Mar for getting California Chrome to race at the meet… I think that was great…

Peeved:

I am particularly pissed at the Big A for having the race track in a ridiculous condition for such a big day of racing…  The RAil was so live, that in some races only a single horse had a chance to win and everything behind that horse was an a random walk.  Shouldn’t we have a Fair Track for such a big race as the Cigar Mile!