Started by Man o Taz, September 23, 2014, 01:32:47 PM
Previous topic - Next topicQuote from: Man o Taz on November 01, 2014, 12:58:15 PMSanta Anita is always going to be speed favoring when you compare it to an Eastern track. Whether a horse will wire the field has more to do with pace. If you think Shared Belief is the most talented horse, I wouldn't throw him out because of the track. I would be very surprised if Espinoza put Chrome on the lead. I think it would take both Bayern and Moreno to have something pretty drastic happen to them early for such a scenario to transpire.
Speed bias coming through - the track is primed for Bayern or Chrome wire to wire with the 60-1 shot coming home.
Just what I feared.
Quote from: Man o Taz on November 01, 2014, 01:34:32 PMShared Belief's action is better on synthetic than dirt and his style of running is also more conducive to it so he'll probably never blow top horses away on dirt but he doesn't need to. When you train a horse correctly, you give them what they need. Shared Belief needed sharp works leading into his last two races. The Awesome Again was a tougher race than it figured to be so Hollendorfer has backed off on his works. I would look at the Awesome Again as a good test to teach Shared Belief how he needs to react when things don't go perfectly. If we all saw things the same way though all of this would be very boring. Mark Twain was right.
OK.
I think Shared Belief is the most talented, but I am not totally sold that he can compete on dirt against the best dirt horses in the country.
The 14 point difference in BSFs between his Pacific Classic and his Awesome Again - even with Victor Espinosa's gamesmanship raises alarms for me.
I have been trying to find out what the time of his last work before the Pacific Classic was.
He worked 52 and change in his last work and everyone is extolling it like it was the best work of the year - to me its almost 5 seconds slower than his work before the Awesome Again. Now, it may have been a maintenance work - but the work before the Awesome Again was a sharp work...and my thinking is that the Awesome Again was the first race of the year for Shared Belief - and perhaps of his career that he was tested in. Looking at the times of his works they seem slower than past works - which makes me think the race took something out of him and I wonder about his ability to win today. He won the Awesome Again, but at what cost.
Quote from: Man o Taz on November 04, 2014, 02:10:12 PM
So I guess you do not subscribe to the notion that California Chrome is the type of horse that takes a couple of races to get up to speed?
Quote from: curtis on November 01, 2014, 06:11:22 PM
I hope you had it Taz. I keyed Bayern and Shared Belief in a trifecta and bet Bayern to win because of his odds. I also thought they are the two most talented.