After watching the replay several times I'm surprised Lanerie had such a clear path open in lane one. Amazing as it seems, it could be that only two size 4 hats understood that running inside out of the second turn and down the stretch was a good idea.

The rest seemed to just fan out as if they expected to mount a late run only to lose ground and run in place for the most part. I consider it odd that most all avoided the inside coming home as if they thought it was not the place to be?

Obviously Classic Empire finished well but IWC finished suspiciously bad. He came a running off the turn and just hung then stopped. Even though I have seen no official report and don't expect too, his stop in the FOY and now again suggests to me that indeed this horse is fragile.

Making performance figures for this race boggles my mind. My view is some ran poorly because of the wet track. some ran poorly because of the added distance, some ran poorly because it [u]was[/u] a fast pace, some ran poorly because they had run so well in their previous race. But which is which? As has been previously speculated they all go backwards except a few. Yet I'm going to have to think twice before holding this race against any regardless how poorly they performed. For Example Thunder Snow! Ha.