Jerry,

Negative 3 is better than Negative 5. I don't want to read into your posting, but is 2 points "within the margin for error". I guess if I spent the time to try and make my own figures, I would understand the answer to that question.

Jerry, my self-proclaimed worthless opinion would be that I am fine with taking two points off of Bandini and High Limit, even in the context of Closing Argument's race yesterday. I think 2:02 and change on that track is worth of a pretty slow figure and even though CA ran visually well, I would not expect a real good figure for Closing Argument.

But now with the huge figures to Bellamy, Bandini, Afleet Alex and Greeley's Galaxy, we will see Derby figures that are potentially (probably?) faster than they should be, because they are tied to figures that were too fast to begin with.

I understand that horses getting faster is more than drugs. I did read the very interesting piece that you wrote about it. I am only questioning why many of us on this board are willing to chalk up yesterday's Derby to "drugs", without doing any real investigation/analysis. Maybe no explanation is necesary or plausible. 20 horses running a distance they have never run before, in a group with lots of bumping. Some run better than expected, some ran awful.

Last point, what about the earlier posted question. Why is it not OK for 80% of the horses in the Bluegrass to bounce, but apparently we will see 80% of the same 3 year old group bounce in the Derby.

Thanks,

Jim