First of all we need to talk about Animal Kingdom and the amazing job of training by Graham Motion, who is one of my favorites.  He is just outstanding — especially at distance racing…  Animal Kingdom totally dominated all of the competition and as everyone know, he won from the nearly impossible 11 post position at Meydon…

Now let’s talk briefly about Itsmyluckyday and Orb.   Turning for home, it looked as if  the result was going to match my ideas with Itsmyluckyday ranging up to take over and Orb in perfect striking position to come in 2nd.  Then as they passed the furlong marker, ITSMYLUCKYDAY got a little late and ORB started to extend his stride!   So who is the KD horse and who isn’t?   So while I am a little late in adding ORB to my Kentucky Derby list, I have to also do some heavy demotion on ITSMY…

Plain and simple, Shug has a real challenger for the Kentucky Derby and like the old school trainer he is, he lets them develop a little more slowly.   So I fully expect ORB to be posting an excellent number, at least a 76.5 or higher, but I won’t have that work done for a few days.   Please remember, Orb was rated at 75.0 with a STAR, he and Itsmyluckyday were both STAR horses and ran first and second.   I am a touch disappointed that ITSMYLUCKYDAY didn’t run better at the end of this race, he seemed to be very labored, maybe got a little dinged in the race…

I havent’ seen the Louisiana Derby yet, when I do I will opine on it, but I do know that Revolutionary did win and I assume he did it with a big late run, so we have a couple of outstanding closers at this time in Revolutionary, Orb and Vyjack who is still rated on the top of my ratings…