To a lessor degree as far as looking for one to throw a new top- it seemed to appear that Rombauer was being pointed to the Preakness all winter/spring. Yes his first race was on turf but he ran well at two on dirt, so bringing him back in a race that was an automatic entry to the Preakness, The El Camino Real, and then skipping the derby despite having enough points after the 3rd at Keeneland seemed to confirm this was the plan all along.

If a top trainer seems to be pointing toward a particular race all season, and he’s got a decent pattern to boot, I think you can expect the horse to be ready to roll in that spot more often than not all things equal.

I think the interesting point to take away from this discussion is what TGJB said in regards to distinguishing tops, if you think a horse is sitting on a new top but is a bit slow, not to assume that if he does run a new top it won’t be enough to get it done. That was a mistake that I seemed to make repeatedly as of late, and more than once on the Derby card. As to the Preakness, I personally thought he’d run well but didn’t think he could beat all three of the chalk, the BB’s & MB. But after reading here in the forum I piggybacked off Johnnym’s pick/post that he wrote indicating he was taking a decent swing with the winner, and boxed a small tri as opposed to only keying the BB’s as I otherwise would have. (Thank you Johnnym!)

As to CT, he was walked off? WTF is going on there, bleed? Hurt? Just didn’t fire so why have him finish?? The optics of that seem pretty awful considering the past two weeks unless there’s something seriously wrong. I never would have expected that to happen. I thought there was good chance he’d scratch, and when he didn’t walking off is the absolute dead last outcome I expected.