5/25/2011

There are questions about the Preakness that really need to be addressed.  Firstly, what is the Triple Crown all about?  My simple answer is it is an endurance test to determine the best horse at carrying weight over a distance of ground — greater than is geneally competed at.  These are truely the first endurance test for 3 year olds they come before any of thes horses have actually lived to the 2nd half of their 3 year old year.  In essense they are still short of full maturity.  So it’s really significant that they are imposted with 126 lbs and challenged by the distance, but even more striking is the short duration of time of only 2 months to run all three challenges.  

To make the challenge less grueling but elongating the time frame, would do disservice to Affirmed, Seattle Slew, Secretariat, Citation and the other champions that secured the Triple Crown.  But beyond that, to stretch it out would cetrainly be totally unfair to the valiant efforts of Real Quiet, Silver Charm, Charismatic,  Alysheba, Riva Ridge, Foolish Pleasure,Sunday Silence, Smarty Jones, all the rest and of course the great Spectacular Bid — all tried so hard to be a Triple Crown champion and had it snatched away because of sheer exhaustion.  To make it easier is to make it NOT AT ALL…

This season will have no Triple Crown victor, but it will have it’s own story and lesson for us as handicapper’s and lover’s of this amazing equine game.   Animal Kingdom, handle perfectly and taking advantage of a closers bias ran to his trainer’s impecable handling a winning effort in the Kentucky Derby.  His actual figure for the KD was a slightly below par number, a 76.5.  Consider what we definatley know now, that the inside of the track was killing speed horses, such as Shackleford and confirmed by Streakin Mohican in the next race, his number was a little soft, let’s call it a soft 76.5 (A hard 76.5 would take into account loss of ground on a track with a “lively rail” – but the “dead rail on KD day, made Animal Kingdom’s trip the “perfect trip” so he had it his way and Shackleford had the “hard going”).   The feeling here is that he should have been able to reproduce that nice run in the Derby, considering the favorable circumstances, but in fact he ran only a 75.3 in the Preakness.   Why shouldn’t he be able to “pair his effort, clearly had he run just a 75.5 he would have been in a dead-heat with Shackleford, just a .3 of a point, when 2 weeks ago he was able to run a ful 1.3 points faster in winning the KD.  

The answer is simple – at least in my mind — he bounced.   Ususally the winner of the KD doesn’t bounce in the Preakness, there is overwhelming stats to prove that, but this guy did bounce.  He is in fact a “grinder” type and more suseptible to a negative reaction in the Preakness, than horses with other types of running styles. so this is a small positive for him and to be considered if he runs in the Belmont.  But this horse is not one for the ages, at least not now.  He won the Kentucky Derby, e took advantage of a weak bunch and made good use of the track bias to do it…Enough said.

Shackelford is really much easier to understand once we get that he ran against the bias in the KD.   He ran a very decent race in winning the Preakness, putting away a pretender in Falashpoint whose only use to the race was to destroy Shackleford’s chances of a Preakness win.  No matter, Shackelford and his 126 pound impost ran the under-seasoned Flashpoint into submission before they reached the 6 furlong marker.   Shackleford overcame this bit of nasty racing luck, but then he was able to repell late challenge of everyone else.  His KD number was a 75.0 (HARD), and his Preakness number was a 75.5 (also Hard due to a tough early pace), so Shackleford showed some definate improvement –  and he is the ONLY one in the race!

We talked about the negative form of MMM who ran a 75.3 (soft – with bias) in the KD and came back to the Preakness with a pathetic 72.3.   As noted on the Power Page, this horse had poor form…

That’s it for now, more to follow…