Richie, I hope you got to read the post Jerry deleted. It was humorous and true, but to address your point. Der Teufle has started 15 times. There was a day when most of the field had about 15 starts pre Derby. But what happened is that the industry bred ouchy horses to ouchy horses and trainers compounded the ouch by pushing the horses for huge efforts,with drugs in many cases. Der Teufle on the other hand did not start out with Pletcher like numbers. He worked up to them. Der Teufle has run both Street Sense and Scat Daddy to their limits. He beat Hard Spun. He just ran against a monumental bias but folks want to discount it upon perceived pace. Has pace been an issue for this horse in the past against good ones?

One other item. This horse's figures have been misjudged. His Derby success will depend upon the track and the entries. This year, Petcher will bring a gaggle, but not many with legitimate speed, with the possible exception of a maturing Cowtown Cat. But in this milieu, you have horses coming in on five, six, eight weeks without a start. You have others without a start at 2 or where the Derby will be their third start. You have a decided lack of seasoning with most, but in Der Teufle you have a horse that just ran one of his best races against a decidely strong bias and without an ability to factor the speed of the track, who can say his race was not best?

A few of the others are faster, but Der Teufle is 80-1 and that does not make sense this year.

Regarding Hard Spun, yes he may have been able to put a head in front of Der Teufle, but he wouldn't have been far in front.

CtC


Obviously, his chances depend upon richiebee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Chuckles:
>
> Interesting that you say that Teuflesberg has
> the best "foundation" in the
> race (and foundation is important for the Derby).
> Indeed he has been entered
> almost every time he has stuck his neck out of his
> stall.
>
> There are a lot of "nice" aspects to this
> story-- trainer Sanders was a long
> time assistant to Zito, trainer Sanders galloped
> Teufel's dam, they paid $9K
> for him, etc, but I can't help but think that a
> more seasoned trainer would have
> brought this need the lead type into the Derby
> more lightly raced.
>
> I stil contend that Hard Spun would have been in
> front of this colt every
> step of the glacially paced BG