Buck,

Respect your opinion also, and certainly not gloating at an 8-5 shot winning. (it takes 8-1 for me to gloat).

But you bring up an interesting topic in your post. I think we can agree that reading the thorographs is about figuring out what a horse CAN run that day, not HAS RUN IN THE PAST. The topic that you don't specifically mention, but your comment reminds me of, is "what odds do you need to have on a horse, if you need the horse to run a new top to win". The Dwyer was a bad betting race because of the 5 horse field, but you can look at it. Even though it probably didn't happen based on the result, you can make a case that expecting a new top out of Sightseeing was reasonable. The problem I would have with him is that he starts out 2 points slower than another horse in the race and gets no weight and was seemingly unlikely to get a significant ground loss edge. Unless you were betting Any Given Saturday to regress off the 8 week freshening, which seemed unlikely given Pletcher's stats off this kind of layoff, you are hoping for a 2 point new top or better and looking for 3-1. Hopefully for you, you were disciplined enough to lay off the race when he went off at only 5-2.

Betting horses with form (not 2 year olds or early spring 3 year olds), I am usually looking for 5-1 or better when I know I very likely need my horse to run a new top to win the race. It isn't an ironclad rule for and you have to adjust for small fields somewhat, like today, but curious as to what other bettors think about this.