I can't believe this is actually still being debated when it seems so obvious to me. :)

1. The Wood Memorial figure had to be slightly suspect because there was only one 9F route race and it was a very windy day.

2. BR was a dominant speed horse in the WM and set a solid pace relative to what his competition could deal with. When dominant speed horses beat up cheaper horses, the winning margins are often much larger than would typcially be the case because the cheap horses get used up chasing a pace that is too fast for them - thus complicating the figure making process.

3. The Wood Memorial day track seemed to be kind to speed. The few closers that won did so after a few races were already run wire to wire and the jockeys started gunning the speed horses to the lead in extremely fast fractions. Worst case scenario is that even if the track wasn't speed favoring, it sure wasn't unkind to speed types like BR. That track had to have helped him a bit.

4. BR got loose in the Wood Memorial and no one in that race had enough quality to challenge him at any point enough to take any startch out of him at all. In other words, the quality of that field was low and maximized his ability to run fast.

Summing up: Every bit of evidence about his performance in the Wood based on subjective trip handicapping, pace figures, figure complications, and subsequent performances etc.. indicates that his performance in the Wood wasn't nearly as good as the figure indicates regardless of whether it was measured properly or not (and IMHO TG and Beyer got it right) . For those of you that don't like subjective answers and want everything to be summed up in a single number, I guess nothing will satisfy you. As much as you might like to believe that exists, IMO it does not.

There were several questions about him going into the Travers.

1. He had never demonstrated conclusively that he would like 10F.

2. Regardless of whether Zito is good with layoffs or not, many trainers that win races with layoffs (and get new tops or close doing so), often fail miserably when they try it against Grade 1 horses of similar ability. The very best guys do get solid performances out of their horses, but they fail more often than not when the real pressure is on. The very best horses in the world often seem to seperate themselves with intangibles that just aren't going to show up in speed figures. They certainly show up in ROI and in the last 1/16 though.

3. He was hurt. Even though it wasn't a major injury, he was definitly out of training for awhile. That's different from a freshening where you are still galloping almost daily etc....

Given that it's impossible to measure exactly how well he ran in the Wood other than to say almost defintely NOT AS WELL AS THE SPEED FIGURE INDICATED (for the all the reasons above), it's impossible to measure exactly what contributed to his defeat in the Travers and to what extent. That should be OK. There ISN"T one number that tells you everything except in some people's fantasies.

IMO he ran well.

The figure will not be exceptionally fast, but even though he got loose and had the rail, he at least resisted a tough bid from a very sharp horse in FA before giving up. He even tried to come back again briefly. IMHO, there's is close to ZERO percent chance that he's not capable of a better performance with a race under his belt (Zito layoff or not). However, given that this was not a great performance and he might run up against tougher pace trips in the future, he is certainly nothing special based on his Traver's performance. The problem of course is that it's difficult to know how much he might improve because it would be foolish to base any opinion on that on his Wood race because of all the complicating factors in measuring that performance.

There is nothing wrong with not being sure and building "not sure" into an odds line. It's vastly superior to being sure about a number that says the wrong thing.




































Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2005 01:54PM by classhandicapper.