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!

The big stories today  are the Cigar Mile and California Chrome hits the turf. First lets’ talk about CC, my choice for 3 year old of the year, trying the turf.  On ability, he should simply have no trouble defeating theses seasoned but slower rivals.  Back in the day, Affirmed was an amazing dirt horse and Laz Barrera — his trainer — thought he would try Affirmed on the Turf.  So he gave him a nice workout on the Turf, his opinion was that Affirmed didn’t run evenly over the turf and that was the end of that experiment.  We have all seen CC’s move over the turf and it seemed nice and even to me — but what do I really know!  When they race, he will be moving faster and as you probably know, when Turf horses accelerate it can be pretty fast!  But it’s still a gamble at the ML of 4/5!  Here is the betting mantra, never bet a horse – to accomplish something new as the favorite!  For me, I will watch and enjoy…   But I reiterate – I really like this colt — A LOT!

The Cigar Mile is absolutely one of the best betting races of the season.  It’s competitive with loads of great handicapping questions for us to answer.  Such as can Secret Circle stretch out to 1 mile or  will the BC races hurt these horses that are returning in less than 30 days from their BC races…  I for one, never like to bet a horse that just ran in the BC, especially if the effort got them a 1st or a place finish or a close up finish — one in which the jockey was asking the horse for everything.  So you can see what my point of view is…  But you ask your own questions and use the Power Page as your reference and you should be okay…