I humbly submit my dissertation on GOT SUNNY in Race 1 at GP on Saturday. To summarize, I think his odds hold, and maybe even drift higher and I think he has a big shot here. I will single on a P5 ticket and use with a couple of others on another - read on if you want to see why I think that.

In race 1, I think I am going to lean on GOT SUNNY (15/1) pretty hard. In his debut going a mile on the turf at GP for Gargan, he did not break all that smartly from the five hole (which I will forgive given it was his first race). He was immediately mugged by the horse just to his outside and he checked multiple times - not an auspicious beginning to a career. Going into the first turn, the only horse in the 12 deep field that was behind him was the horse that caused his interference. Bravo got him to the rail early as he was fairly far behind, but on the back side he brought him outside and encountered a bit of traffic. He ended up going 4 wide into the far turn and then was swung at least 8 wide before they straightened out for the stretch as horses stacked up coming out of the bend. It looked like he was running hard, but he was so wide he really did not make up any ground on anyone. TG indicates he was 4 wide, so they got a fairly accurate description of how wide he was into the turn, but the DRF comment just makes mention of his early trouble, so his actual running line does not look very good. He passed some tiring back markers late to finish 8th by almost 10 lengths. Given it was his debut, he had some trouble, and how wide he ended up, I would expect improvement - perhaps significant improvement second out. He will have to improve to win this, but perhaps not as significantly as it might seem on the surface as his raw TG number is better than 1/3 of the field and not that far off most of the others. He has had 56 days off since that January 6 debut and the race he comes out of is very live in my opinion. Of the first five finishers in that race, four have come back to run and they all have won. For the other six, one finished 2nd, one ran 4th, two ran 5th, one virtually pulled up, and one has not yet come back. This definitely looks like a key race to me and most of the finishers out of that race improved their performance next time out. Gargan hits at about 12% second out and I do like that not only is this is his second start overall but also his second start around two turns as debuting around two turns is tough, even on the grass. Got Sunny should gain something from the experience. It also seems like much of the tougher competition is stuck on the outside or mired on the AE, so they are going to have to work out trips or will not even be able to compete. Certainly, there are some negatives as naysayers would point out that he took over a month to record a workout after his last race and only has two works coming back into this one, that he would need to improve in order to even hit the board, and that he ran his first quarter last time in 13 and a half seconds so if he doesn't break better today, then he's going to get shuffled back in traffic, that he was 60/1 in debut so how could he be any good, and finally, he ran fairly slow last time because he is fairly slow and what you see is what you will get. Of course, those arguments could all be valid but that's why you're getting double digit odds here, but I think he's going to improve. I suspect he will be closer to the lead, especially if he breaks well. In his debut after his slow, troubled first quarter, he ran the next 4f in 46.56. Is it going to be enough to win? I'm not sure but I think it's worth the risk as I think he ran better than it looks on paper and he should improve this time out. On big days like this I often press a little harder, so my plan is to bet two early P5 tickets - one with a single of the 3, Got Sunny in the first race and the other spreading a bit deeper. I have not really handicapped the last four races in the sequence yet so I'm not sure how deep I would go in any of the other legs and I will let my handicapping determine the rest of the sequence.