The only thing I did right was predicting that the race would fall apart, and not buying into Bellamymania. The horses I chose to pick up the pieces ran in a line, but they finished 13-15-14, ouch.

My buddy in SoCal bet Giacomo across the board. Here's what he sent me last night, I shrugged it off, but in hindsight he makes some insightful points. Good for him, he scored big time.

On to the Preakness for the rest of us...

> 1. Giacomo (10)
>
> Nearly everyone agrees that the SoCal prep scene was weak in '05. But with a quick, dismissive pass, no one ever asks why. With a record 36" of rain this winter, horses and trainers alike dodged raindrops daily and missed a good share of training. I now believe many of these horses came up short and were about a month behind the eastern horses during prep season.
>
> There is no better example of this than Giacomo, a horse I backed in the mysterious, and potentially criminal SA Derby. That race, run in 47.1 and 1:11.1 was slower than $20K filly claimers and seemed to focus more on what Sweet Catomine was doing than winning the race. Smith did not ask much in the stretch and still held his own. Giacomo had plenty of Graded Stakes money to get into the Derby, even before the debacle in SA, and since everybody expected the fastest filly in the world to run away and hide, I now belive that this was a million dollar workout.
>
> Fast forward a few weeks and the typically conservative Shirreffs has suddenly stepped on the gas pedal. The bullet on 4/25 at 7f is faster than the winning times in 7 of the 12 7f races found in all of the contenters' past performance lines and 4 full seconds faster than his work for the San Felipe. The 6f bullet on 5/1 is the fastest at 6f of any Derby workout, 3 full seconds faster than his SA Derby work and is one click faster than he ran the first 6f in the actual SA Derby. Take your pick, the horse has trained his way into the missing knock-out punch or Sherriffs has simply lost it.
>
> An improving horse, a trainer who has held the his best back in exchange for one very long stretch run, a hall-of-famer up and quite possibly the biggest line-up of front-runners in Derby history to run at leaves only one thing lacking. You just gotta believe. It's hard at 50-1 morning line, but I'd bet this horse at 15-1.
>
> A big move on the turn and a "where did that come from?" stretch drive puts this horse on my wall, in a very nice frame, forever.