All But A Few Teeth Out. (404 Views)
Posted by:
Mall (IP Logged)
Date: May 05, 2005 07:35AM
Although I'm not sure if it's 83 yr old trainer Warren Stute or the guy he punched in the mouth on the way home from the hospital after his 2nd of 3 strokes, as described in John Clay's Grumpy Old Horsemen article in today's Herald-Leader(http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky) I have it on good authority that Stute, like Sheppard, is strictly a hay, oats & water guy.
Crist makes the pt, legitimate I think, that the reason previous winners met certain criteria(no. of starts, performance level in a prep, etc) is because all or almost all of the horses in the race which had a chance met those criteria. Not so this yr, so there is a good chance the winner will not meet those criteria. So far so good, if you buy into the premise. Assuming you do, does it then make sense to try to determine the winner by applying the same handicapping factors which were used when all of the horses met the old criteria?