First off, congrats to Furious Pete and a few others that liked Always Dreaming. Personally, couldn't have been more wrong about the race. Hated Always Dreaming and loved Practical Joke and Irish War Cry. The latter was horrendous and the former was just OK (got a ride I could not have expected from post 19 - in a good way, and still was relatively empty).

Despite Treadhead and Jerry apparently not noticing, the rail was iron for almost the two full days. And as is the case with iron rails, speed was really good as well.

That said, hard to say how much that helped AD as he set a "plus" pace, put away a horse up front that wasn't any good (stately honor), then put away the fastest horse in the race (Irish War Cry) and was drawing away in the stretch. While speed and the rail were good, the visual on the derby wasn't one of a bias win. Bias aided wins look like Big World and Benner Island on Friday and CAviar Czar on Saturday. Where the front runner looks like they will be swallowed on the turn and through most of the stretch but they miraculously "keep finding".

This horse was extremely good, bias or not. I, for one, am not salivating to bet against (or on) him in 2 weeks in the Preakness. Part of that is that exactly who ran well enough yesterday to give a mulligan to? Maybe Classic Empire, off a terrible trip? Not lookin at lee, who never left a gold rail (great ride).

TGJB, as for the figure. there were 8 lengths between the winner and the third place finisher. I can't imagine this is going to be a slow figure. Or a backwards move as JP702006 suggests. What, every horse then X'ed? Literally every one.

How about another view. The Bluegrass being as fast as TG had it, meant a couple of key things. It meant McCracken was sitting on a nice forward move, perhaps the most likely horse to run well, it meant Practical Joke had a forward moving line with moderate steps and looked great as well. Well, make the Bluegrass two points slower, which is not out of line, all of a sudden McCracken and Practical Joke are both moving backwards, not forwards, Classic Empire still hasn't gotten to his 2 year old top and with Irish War Cry sitting on a possible bounce, all the "fast horses" maybe don't run. (which happened.)

Not sour grapes, just a thought.

Jim