Re: Sinister Minister is NOT Bellamy Road (686 Views)
Posted by:
tmcdevitt (IP Logged)
Date: April 25, 2006 01:29PM
Chuckles-
You're right,he is NOT Bellamy Road.Not nearly as good. After years of passively reading this board but never posting, this whole SM thing has finally pushed me off the ledge. Here goes;
The study that needs to be done is the following: Across the top 10 tracks in the country, for the last 2 years, calculate the average distance between the winner and last place horse for every dirt race. Seperate into two groups of sprints and routes. What you will likely see is that all the tracks are roughly equal with the exception of Keeneland. Everybody who posts here seems to be talented and knowledgeable handicappers. How often are you left clutching your tickets in your sweaty palms waiting for the outcome of a photo finish at Keeneland??? Virtually never.
It's not about whether the track was speed favoring or not on BG day. Keeneland has always produced runaway winners, with incredibly strung out fields, and numbers that are often never repeated again. Whether its the track surface, lack of banking on the turns, lush scenery......who knows. It's just not able to be simply captured by saying the KEE track was speed favoring or not on a given day. The track simply produces races that you don't see elsewhere.
I can't tell you how many tickets I've cashed playing against runaway winners at KEE when they show up at another track, or on hores who turned in inexplicably horrendous efforts at KEE. The BG is a complete throwout. Sinister Minister is still just a horse with a solitary MAIDEN 5 1/2F, $62.5K Claiming win on his resume, not a 9F Grade 1 winner. And since I was at GG for the Cal Derby (I live about a mile away) I can tell you with certainty that bouncing off the rail did NOT somehow hide his true Grade 1 form. It showed him to be what he really is; A green, one dimensional horse with a solitary Maiden 5 1/2F, $62.5K Claiming win.
Bellamy Road had a 5 in a 2-turn, $200K stakes race as a 2YO, and a slightly negative number in a mile allowance race as a 3YO before the Wood. No comparison.
Book it; he's cloer to last than first in the derby. You're a way better handicapper than that Chuckles. The question I struggle with out of the BG is whether BG Cat's thoro-pattern can be taken at face value....for all of the reasons listed above
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2006 01:46PM by tmcdevitt.