I was driving back after spending a nice weekend in San Diego and happened to tell my wife about the message board 'battle' being waged here. I told her that I was going to post a 'brief' detailing all of Jerry and Alydar's past sins. She looked at me like I was insane. Then she said something about being a geek and I got that feeling that if things ever went South with us I'd never see my son again.

That said, I was very glad to see the topics of conversation move on to other things over the weekend and I think that's what I will do as well.

I said everything I needed to say in past posts and don't really have the desire to redredge all of the posts and further kill the herd of dead horses we have slaughtered.

I am also reminded by my first post on May 23 where I stated that "there will never be a true and final answer as to whether TG or Rag have it right."

I think that the best thing anyone can do if they want to contrast the different approaches is just to read the posts on this and the Ragozin board surrounding the 13th race at Pimlico on May 18. I can't think of a clearer differentiator of product and mindset than the posts of Friedman and Brown on this subject.

I am very much looking forward to the handicapping contest with HP and any other takers. My understanding is that it is a $1,000 bankroll to be bet on any or all of the 12 races on June 8 at Belmont. I may be posting my picks early since I will be flying to NYC on the Thursday night redeye. If not, I'll post Friday afternoon or evening. Since I won't have seen the TG sheets I won't know how the lines compare.

I think ultimately it would be fun and informative to make picks where one sheet clearly has a horse faster/slower/worse pattern/better pattern and see how those horses do over a long period of time. But that is not what we will be doing this Friday.

I think that this, and perhaps future contests will stimulate the right kind of discussion about handicapping and we can avoid some of the diatribes (of which I authored a few) of recent posts.