Recapping the day - it was tough for favorites and tough for me (for different reasons). Below par, and if not for a couple nice payouts, would have been a disaster instead of just bad. On the racing:

Lush Lips had no business winning that race. All class.

The turfers in the opener must be pretty good. Sure the turf was hard, but no one else came especially close to a track record, even at the distance.

Dirt races will be hard to figure and curious to see what TG does. Two possibilities: there were only four or five good horses in these races, or there were 4 or 5 stars.

3 miles and the FOY 2-turner. Rained mid-card, but looked worse on TV than on site. GP Mile and a geared down Knightsbridge went 2 seconds faster than the Devona Dale, which went about a second and a half faster than the maiden boys. FOY went about 8 seconds slower than the GP Mile, though a hard comp given the runup. Of note were the final fractions:

GP Mile - :13.50
DD - :13.10
FOY - :12.77

Rain was between the Mile and the DD, so maybe the track sped up. But, since the DD winner ran a full second faster than her field in the final furlong, maybe she's just a star. Knights was in a jog, and, some pretty nice horses were 10 back of the FOY pair.

Knightsbridge should get a monster number - a minus 3 or something. (Mika's pattern is now 0-X-XX).

The FOY got a 101 Beyer, with Wallabee running the bigger race. Smells like a 1 to me, which would also give the Dude a solid move forward. Bravaro probably hit his number again.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2026 01:03PM by ajkreider.