Animal Kingdom reigns over the land running a 76.5 – decent but not great!

5/10/11

Before I say anything else, I just want to make this one predictive statedment, Animal Kingdom should improve off of this Kentucky Derby effort.  While, his actual number — 76.5– is not as fast as Giacomo and no where near as fast as the great runs by  either Monarchos or Barbaro, it was much better than Super Saver.   But the important thing to consider is the “form-cycle” that Animal Kingdom is following.  I would argue that this moderate PPN will serve him much better than if he had run a faster PPN.  In fact, this is IN-LINE (with his previous 4 races) and FORWARD GOING — suggesting some terrific runs in his future!

   For those of you who had the Power Pages for the KD, I made both a PPN and gave a handicapping comment.  Only two horses had a postive comment — Shackleford and Animal Kingdom — and one had a neutral comment, Archarcharch.  Those are the simple facts.   I had only 1 STAR horse, that was Shackelford.   It’s really important as a handicapper to think in terms of form cycle whenever possible.  And as I have said so many times, the Kentucky Derby is teh king of form-cycle races.  Once again, teh winner of te Derby is a horse that had 2-year old route races.  If you limited your bets to horses that had run 2-turn races with 122 lbs up as a 2 year old and had some indication of decent races leading up to the Derby and maybe some nice workout commentary, you would be doing great.  Simply great…

Here are the numbers, in parentheis are my PPN in quotes is the number they actually ran!  Animal Kingdom (74.0)- “76.5” ; Nehro (76.8) – “75.5”;  Mucho Macho Man (75.8) – “75.3”; Shackleford (75.0*) – “75.0” — this is your top 4 horses.  it’s worth noting that all the PPN’s were rated down from their previous races this year, so Animal Kingdom is the only horse that ran a forward race.  Shacklefor might also be considered to have run forward, but unable to get 1 1/4 miles, his run in the lane was a bit of a struggle.   More to follow over the next several days…

5/8/2011

Congrats to Animal Kingdom, Trainer G. Motion, Jockey – J. R. Velasquez and owner Barry Irwin & Team Valor…

My take starts in the first strides with Schackleford out-fotting Comma To The Top to the first turn.  I thought that was very likely and it’s one of the handicapping ideas that influenced me to consider betting on Schackleford.  For me it was fine, I got a good run from Schackleford and turn for home with the lead at 23/1 odds.  He ran like a fit horse, he just isn’t good enough to get 1 1/4 miles at this time of his career.  It doesn’t look to me, like he wanst more than 1 1/8th.  some are made to go 1 1/4 miles most are not.  Animcal Kingdom cetainly is and to add a thought, maybe this is really going to be a great horse, one to remember 20 years from now.   Oh yeah, one more comment that most good handicappers already know who follow racing on the East coast, trainer – G. Motion is at the top of  class trainers.  everyone knows how I feel about him, dating back to the last Breeders’ Cup…

The second comment I feel needs to be made is that the #1 post hurt Archarcharch in more ways than just taking his racing chances away.  He broke from the gate and in the very first stride, he was completely twisted by the ground severe slop to the left.  All his weight lunged forward to find the surface he was reaching to, was uneven and would not support him.  But more important than the bad racing luck and it’s effect on his chances to win the Derby, he came up lame after trying to race.  No chance after that imbalanced start and we can only hope that he comes back from this injury…  The people at Churchill Downs need to wake up….

Well – I am guessing we are all a bit emotionally spent at this time…Again if you had Animal Kingdom,  good play!