Sunday’s (3-10-2013) Power Page and KHSS for Aqueduct and Santa Anita are ready for download…

EXIT PLAY WILL RETURN (for next Fri., Sat & Sun)

“P” is for Potential to Improve in Wet Conditions

We don’t often talk about the important value of the “P” horses in conditions that have a “wet” influence to them such as we had at both Aqueduct and Santa Anita…   Here is how they did, there were 6 horses with a “p” notation at Aqueduct and 3 of them won and 1 placed the yield was a positive $34.70 at a nominal cost of on $12.00, while at Santa Anita through the first 7 races there were a total of 7 “p” horses with a yield of $14.60 at a cost of $14.00…   I have said it many time, and I shall repeat it again for your benefit – in wet conditions, the “p” horses are  terrific!

 

3 Years Olds marching forward…

It’s absolutely undeniable that Verrazano and Java’s War have moved themselves up on everyone’s KD list.  I must beat my chest a little for giving the Race Day Listeners an opportunity to benefit from that opinion.  But now that we have seen the race, we must conclude that these two runners are surely going to be factors IF they continue to move forward toward the Kentucky Derby.  For those of you who grabbed a little Java’s War money today, please enjoy it, but don’t get too carried away  as terrific looking 3 year olds are popping up.   Hear The Ghost definately stamped himself as a serious horse with a terrific acceleration in the last 110yards in the San Felipe as well.  It was obvious to anyone who was watching the San Felipe that Flashback and Goldencents were cooking themselves to well done, long before they turned for home,  Julian Leparoux couldn’t hold Flashback at all in the first turn and had to get this  free-running colt out to done some running.  Flashback definately got the conditioning he needed here and will be double tough in his next start — if he cools out nicely.  I suppose we can say that about all these horses, but on such a lightly raced colt, I feel the need to always add that caveat.  Flashback looks like this years Bodemeister, someone I totally misunderstood last season, so I definately do not want to make that mistake again…   Hear the Ghost was really terrific though, with having only 2 sprints coming into today San Felipe, he stretched out just as we would expect from a son of Ghostzapper for such a great trainer as Jerry Hollendorfer  (I Love his first name)…   Anyway, here is another that needs to cool out well and improve off of this race…   In the old days, horses such as Flashback and Hear The Ghost would be summarily dismissed from my KD list, but in this case, I like the speed conditioning for Flashback and thing HEar The Ghost will be number 7 on my KD list…

 

Saturday’s (3-09-2013) Power Page and KHSS for Aqueduct and Santa Anita are ready for download…

For the moment we will divert all discussion to the San Felipe and The Tampa Bay Derby.  These are two major prep races seem to me as important as any others as they distinctly set foundation levels for a number of horses that need to step up for true Derby contention and  for the more developed types these two races are true building blocks to the KD…   Obviously, the 2 most important to step up are Verrazano and Flashback if you look at most of the KD contenders list.  But truthfully, none of  the racers have doen enough at this point to deserve a spot in the KS and only Verrazano has an actual race that stamps hims as Kentucky Derby capable.    so even a fine looking young horse such as Flashback (who is on my top 6 contenders list) still have to move forward and prove there merit as well as there development.  You see even if they have the class, if they haven’t developed fast enough, the KD grind will only hurt them, so these races are really important.

Now for the good stuff, there are probably a number of “un-hearlded” runners who could step up here and become legit KD contenders.  It seems to me that’s pretty much what happened last year.  Two of the ones that will have my attention at Santa Anita are  Salutos Amigos and Omega Star (in no particular order)  – while over at Tampa Bay a horse like Java War is really intriguing, especially with the TURF conditioning at 2 years old which isn’t a bad sign for a a KD contender…

We will see if the order changes in my top 6…