Wide open race.

Rebel Rebel - has an excellent race in the 2000 Guineas. Other than that, there's not too much to get excited about. However he goes to Frankel. The approximate 2 month layoff seems to be the perfect time frame for move up trainers to work their magic. If I get involved, I can't see leaving this one out.

English Channel - is the likely favorite. No real edge in the figures, but it's hard for me key against a horse that's 4 of 5 on the turf with fairly consistent dominant wins when his 1 loss came off a layoff in a race where the final 1/4 was in 22.2 and he was coming from 9th. Not too many horses have Don Six-like first quarter speed in the last quarter of a 1 mile race. Even the recent dominant wins have been in slow paced affairs with sub 12 fractions late. I don't think we will find out how fast this horse really is until he's actually in a race where he gets to show it.

Interpatation - comes out of the same race as EC. He saved gound most of the way waiting for a chance to run, was steadied slightly when getting ready to swing outside for his run in the stretch and lost some ground to them because the horses were really sprinting at that point. Finished very well very late. This is not the kind of horse I think is a high probablity to win or even fire a huge effort, but it's the kind that I think could be better than he looks on paper because the pace and trip aspect of that performance are not that obvious and he doesn't have a great record prior to that. This is the kind of horse I like to use in exotics and hope he gets a trip or something to make a big ticket.

After that I could make a case for any number of evenly matched horses - some of which might be more likely than Interpatation but whose merits are more obvious.

The key for me is that IMO English Channel "could" be a lot better than his figures indicate given all the slow paced races he been in and the way he's sprinted clear so dominantly in fast times late. That makes it tough for me to key against him - which in turn makes it difficut to find any value other than a move up trainer or a hidden trip.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2005 11:09AM by classhandicapper.