Well all the Derby Preps are run and for the next week or so were going to hear a lot of the following, "so and so worked great today". Today that horse was Denis of Cork, tomorrow it will be someone else. http://tcm.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=44710.
Horses that are under consideration for the Kentucky Derby are, in general, pretty solid animals and none of them work like a 16k claimer that runs at Aqueduct on a Wednesday. I can think of very few Derby week work reports that actually meant something in terms of handicapping and betting the race. The instances that the information was valuable is not the brimming excitement from a trainer, jockey or owner who desperately wants to win the Derby but exactly the opposite, the negative work. More times then not when a horse works poorly in his Derby preparations they don't run a step. I would say we hear about 19 horses who work "super" or "awesome" for the Derby and 1 who does not, give me the info on the 1 and keep your 19.
I do think this year though that the synthetic to dirt issue clouds the workout reports and we are probably going to hear about horses like Colonal John and Adriano as they prepare for the Derby that we should pay more attention to then usual. Unless one of them looks like a fish out of water on dirt then I will likely ignore these reports as well. Handicap the race based on the abundance of info we have from figures, charts and replays, there is no need to try to handicap the opinion of some guy watching the works on HRTV.
1 comment:
Good stuff, as someone who tends to "get sucked in" becuase i am new to hrse racing that is good to know.
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