Richiebee,

You are right and I wanted to post about this but it would sound too much like redboarding. i was at the track all day and had no computer access to post about the race, but I thought Smokeume was a great bet. Even without re-assessing the True North, this horse was fast enough to win and had just won over a wet track.

I thought 5-2 was a fair price without considering Chantal Sutherland riding. As per my posting last week about betting Santos and other jockeys who I consider to be bad, I upped 5-2 to 7-2 as the price I would take. 5-1 was very generous.

The problem was the exacta. The "proper" play was probably to use Smokeume with the other two horses coming out of the True North, Wily of the Valley and Voodoo. But I was very discouraged by the race that wily of the valley ran that day, so I used Voodoo and Clever Electrician (who ran a pretty fast T-graph number). So I got the 5-1, but missed the exotics, which were also OK at $55 and $200+.

It is up to Jerry if he wants to restate the True North, but for my betting purposes, enough evidence is in. That race was a key race and faster than the figure it was given.