Re: California Beyers (566 Views)
Date: March 09, 2005 09:17AM
I thought the RHT had almost no chance to develop at 3 and that's what some people were missing. He came out running and was immediately thrown to the wolves, where he was running quite well. IMHO, running 1s against the best 3yo horses in the country is a lot better than running 2s against limited allowance horses.
The Belmont is the most obvious throw out race you are ever going to find. It was 12F and he engaged a vastly superior horse in a duel in fast fractions.
The Monmouth race was also an obvious throwout. The performace was too dreadful to be taken seriously and they immediately stopped on him. So it's fairly obvious something was wrong.
He came back fine at 4. If people were looking for a huge new peak at 7F that's just silly. That was obviously just a prep (albiet a valuable one). His next race was better and this was obviously the main event.
IMO, based on his 3YO figures in the spring and status as a lightly raced horse that got interrupted last year, he was very likely to improve here.
That's different than saying he figured to improve enough to beat St. Liam if that one fired his best shot.