Belmont Speed Figures:

Here is the actual assigned Speed Figure…as with last year, the top number is “way-below-par”.

Ruler On Ice               74.5       Wet track helped

Stay Thirsty               74.3      Moved up in the Sloppy going

Brilliant Speed         73.8     About average for this horse

Nehro                              72.0    Perfect tracking trip, poor effort

Shackleford                71.8     Had it all his own way, poor effort

Animal Kingdom   71.3     Big Trouble early on– but a repeat of his KD would have won

and the rest just were terrible!

I want to add, as a handicapper, that Mucho Macho Man, once again proved that he didn’t belong, as did Master of Hounds.  Both horsese werer terribly mis-managed in my opinion and confirm my opinion that Aiden O’Brien is a very average trainer with great stock.  Note, when I rate a trainer, I am not considering how well he cares for a horse, I am only evaluating how well he places and prepares a horse to win in the USA.  So Mr. O’Brien might be fantastic in many of the important disciplines of healthcare and winning in Europe, but so far his success rated in the USA is just poor…  AS said at every opportunity, that SPEED FIGURES say there is something wrong with Mucho Macho Man, the the connections are not saavy enough to see, what good handicappers already know.  MMM had 3 opportunities to run decently, his last two efforts are examples that he is really on the decline…It is a shame…

6/12/2011

Belmont Post-mortem:

There is little to say now that wasn’t said before, these are very mediocre group that was beaten by a nicely handled Grade -III. type horse that was managed very well.  One caveat, on the Power Page, Ruler On Ice was the only horse with an “m” listed in the entire field, so the Power Page (as it usually is) is better than me.  And I make the Power Page, this is something we can talk about at another time.   Those are the facts, Ruler was the ONLY HORSE LISTED with an ‘m” indicating he improves in the WET going.  As it happenned, on my morning spot on Ralph Siraco’s  Race Day Las Vegas show, I still stuck to my guns on Nehro, but I did add Ruler On Ice in as one of my exacta/exotic-turn horses, because of that littel “m” and the wet track we now knew we were going to have for the Belmont.

The Sloppy condition is clearly a smoke screen, we won’t know for sometime if a horse ran poorly because of the SLOPPY condition or did it run poorly because of the grueling Triple Crown road, these horses have travelled.  Clearly, the historicaly bias suggest it’s the grind.  I thought it was really interesting how Dale Roman’s felt the sloppy condition really favored Shackleford and yet when the real running  started, Shackleford was simply empty.  Animal Kingdom lost almost all chance at the start, raced valiantly up into position after his near catastrophic start – and cudo’s to J.R. Velasquez for not falling off!   But the apparant time was slow and if AK was in the same condition today that he was in on May 7, he would have run over this field again.  But to my way of thinking, he was also spent and with the bad start, he lost all chance.   I would not argue with anyone who might feel that AK would have won, had he had a fair shake at the START, but my feeling is he would have been 3rd of 4th at best, but I definately do feel he would have beaten Shackleford with a decent start, so on that count, my handicapping wasn’t as good as I would have liked.   Maybe Nehro would have raced better if he caught a fast track, we shall see, but it is possible that I over-rated te ark Derby or it’s also possible that he ran his best that day, I caught the number correctly and he just isn’t ready to recover…  But I think it might well have been just the SLOPPY going…  Congrats to Ruler On Ice, Kelly Breen and Jose Valdivia on a job well done and the smarts to take a shot here…