After a dull performance, you'll often hear a horse's connections reason that the horse didn't fire because it "didn't like the track." For example, on the day of BARBARO's Holy Bull Stakes win, the Gulfstream card was run on a sloppy track, and afterwards I sensed that this excuse was used quite a bit by those whose horses didn't run well. Now, I accept to a certain extent that a horse may feel better when his running feet squish into the idiosyncrasies of one racing surface as opposed to another. There are many mysteries of racing. [Jeez, wait till all track surfaces are made up of chopped up rubber! Ugh.] But in my heart of hearts, I really don't agree. I think the "didn't like the track" excuse is more often than not, a false excuse. [I feel the same way about the reasoning that a bad performance by a baseball pitcher is due to faulty "mechanics." When New York Yankees color commentator Susan Waldman ascribes a bad Randy Johnson outing to the pitcher's bad mechanics, I usually laugh out loud and shake my head. Hey, the guy's getting old. Randy's not what he once was. And the competition just HIT HIM! Give THEM credit! You can't throw well all the time. And you can't have peak performances all the time in horse racing.]

In today's Racing Form, trainer Todd Pletcher made the following remark about his BLUEGRASS CAT, who had won the Sam Davis at Tampa a month ago, but next out lost a shoe around the second turn of the Tampa Bay Derby, a race he finished a good second: "I don't think he liked the track, which was a lot dryer and cuppier for the Tampa Bay Derby than it was four weeks earlier when he won the Sam Davis." [When interviewed after a winning race, Todd's got the "win-speak" down pat now. After all, he's getting a lot of practice.] I don't blame the track for BLUEGRASS CAT's loss in the Tampa Bay Derby. I think the horse ran admirably. Just not well enough to win. In sheets parlance, it's called a bounce or a regression, even if it's a slight one.

JohnTChance