Continuing with our discussion of the Breeders’ Cup we should start in the beginning on Friday, with the silliest of races, 1 3/4 Miles on on the Main Track.  There really are NOT any races for this distance cared at Grade 1 status in the US or the rest of the world as far as I can tell.  There are a few in Europe and other locations, but to my knowledge they are always on the Grass courses.  So naturally, the BCC committee in all there glory card this card of a race.  My insight was to advise my peeps to play anything they liked at 9/1 or higher.  And the winner paid – 9/1.  I can hear someone saying, why is this a “silly” race, the answer is simple — none of the horses had run a race at over 1 1/2 mile on the dirt.  So you would have to infer dirt form from Turf Form and you would have to guess who could stay the distance, handicapping a plethora of races from 1 mile to 1 1/4 mile to be able to stretch out to 1 3/4 miles.  It’s just plain idiotic…

So after that fiasco (which I was actually quite right about) came a terrific race of youngs going at tooth and nail at 1/16 mile on the Turf.   While I would prefer to see them relax a bit on these two year olds, they really do put on a show.  The handicapping is NOT easy, because for the most part, this crew still can be changing their minds – just when you want them to behave one way, they go the other…  That’s a “yout” for you.   Also, we have very few races to draw conclusions about each horse, they are as a group very “lightly raced”, what this demands is odds…  After all – who would have predicted that Bobby’s Kitten would blast off setting suicide fractions – you almost never see a Chad Brown horse do such, they are always the most cooperative ones.  But not no Friday, Bobby’s Kitten went nuclear on the front end and that led to his getting himself beat!  Outstrip was my 2nd rated horse and he finished with a flourish to win like a champ — and he might be one.  Just a note, I had a4 horses with STARS — in BC races the STAR are a little less important that in normal racing — I am thinking of dropping the STAR notaion in future BC races for “youts” – we just get too many of them because we are looking at data that is a bit too thin…

As we go to the BC DIRT MILE — for those who knew to back the early speed of Goldencents — you have to thank the Track Super for this one, he ran like crazy to get the lead and limped on home with only stragglers trying to get into it.   If you aren’t sure what a SPEED TRACK looks like, go get the tapes to see this one again.  The final fig was terrible for this class, literally every horse in this race runs those figs for fun, but on this track the closer types couldn’t raise a scare in here.   Believe me when I tell you that some of these could breeze fast enough to have won this heat, but no Monday, the closers were simply dead meat!

My favorite race on Friday was the 2 year old Juvy Fillies attacking the Grass course, with a brilliant run from Chriselliam at 8/1.  This filly was my selection at the seminar, largely because I felt the 12 post was a big knock on Testa Rossa and the past form on Chriselliam had everything I liked.  Plenty of races, improvement on each stretch of distance…   OF course, I was just approximating the number for the Euro fillies, but I think I got it about right with Testa Rossi running her race at doing a little better than the 75.8 I assigned her on the Power Page from the very difficult 12 post, so Chris was a bit better than I forecast – that’s just okay with me!!!

Finally, Beholder, as I said on Race Day Las Vegas this morning repeated her last effort — which was a whopper and showed the world that she is one tough filly.  The race was so totally disappointing in every other aspect, Royal Delta was “stung” from her racing and couldn’t handle the sting of this track and Princess of Sylmar literally lost interest in racing and just plodded home.  I can’t help but think about Todd Pletcher who told the world that she was working wonderfully for this race.  It just shows you that it pays to keep the “ear plugs” in when you are handicapping….   I certainly did not expect such a terrible race for the Princess… Once again, Todd Pletcher had another terrible day on Breeders’ Cup…

Tomorrow we will get into Saturday’s Card…