Apologies to everybody about what is obviously redboarding.

Also, no offense, Jerry, but maybe you are wrong about the sprint and route issue in California.

If you look at the Musique Toujours Sheet they posted on the Ragozin site today, MT does NOT look like a logical claim off Ragozin sheets while he did look logical on Thorograph. I am thinking the different treatment of routes and sprints could be the issue (and maybe instead of getting sprints too fast, they were getting routes too slow). I also find it very hard to believe that somebody counseled claiming Musique Toujours off the Ragozin sheet he had on the date he was claimed. Remember, you have to assume that you can only look at the figures before November 1 (obviously, nobody could have know the figure he would run the day he was claimed when they were making the decision to claim).

It is pretty interesting how different the sheets are. (one should look at both the Ragozin Sheet and the Thorograph sheet to follow this discussion).

At the start of the horse's career, while he was sprinting, you had the horse 5 points slower than Ragozin (and, remember, usually your numbers are faster than Ragozin's). Maybe this is Ragozin (or LF) making sprints too fast. Then, when the horse starts routing, your figs are faster than Ragozin's (either things are normal -- or perhaps his routes are too slow?). In a lot of cases the difference is as much as 5 points faster.

What is really significant to me is, off Ragozin, he was a horse that had an 11 top (three months before the claim), but the race before he was claimed was only a 12.5 -- a point and a half off his top. This is not necessarily so healthy under the pattern reading school based on small differences which counsels being suspicious of a young lightly raced horse having so much trouble getting back to a top -- it looks like the '11' on August 20 really took it out of him (On the contrary, you had him following up his Aug 20 top with another forward move on Aug 31).

Based on Friedman-type pattern reads, why claim this horse off this pattern on November 20? Why decide to claim him then? On August 31 (three months earlier), off Ragozin, the horse was coming off his top (the 11 on Aug 20) and his pattern looked much better AND you could have claimed him for only 32k. Why wait 3 months, get a worse pattern, no improvement, and pay an extra 8 large for the horse? Doesn't seem too logical to me.

On your sheets, the horse looked much healthier. You had him making and pairing tops much more frequently (compare the July 20 figures and the August 31 figures between the two sheet makers). Most significantly, on October 31 (the race before Glassman claimed him), you had him making a big significant top with a trouble mark to boot -- this was a real good indication that he was moving forward. On that same race, Ragozin was giving him a figure slower than his top without any excuse either (and again, this was the horse's first two turn race at Santa Anita, maybe Ragozin/LF was making those too slow?). To me, admittedly looking back, he looked like a live horse on Thorograph while on Ragozin, I wonder why anybody would have decided to claim him.

I really wonder who was behind the claim (and what product he or she was using when the decision was made). And, if it was a she, I want to meet her!