For what it's worth,I've done pretty well in this race over the yrs, & my only major disagreement with your dope is that I think Bonapaw might be the proverbial "freak." In fact, I started out thinking he might be a single, though I'm not as certain of that now that I've looked at the race a few times. As I see it, the fact that B has already won twice at AP & his recent work are strong positives. The biggest knock I have heard from some very accomplished handicappers is that B needs the lead & will get cooked by what on paper figures to be very fast fractions. My rejoinder is that the number of speed duels which people predict to set up late closers in 6f races is much higher than the number which actually occur. I'm also of the opinion that B does not need the lead because his pps include 6 previous instances where he was 3rd or more at the 1/4 & 1/2 and closed to win. I also think B's cruising speed is 44 & change. My biggest concerns are the, shall we say, unique connections, a question re the kind of sprinters B has faced & beat, & the loss to XH in the desert heat, when XH was at her worst.

XH's only 2 losses this yr came in the heat at Calder & Dubai, & she is apparently thriving in the cooler weather in Chicago. Again, dopesters I respect maintain that she also needs the lead & will be compromised by her running style. However, she has run slightly off the pace & won 6 times, though not recently & never with Vega in the irons if you go by her pps. However, the race I saw her run in the Phoenix is different from the one on paper. She dropped back to 3rd near the turn & then passed the pacesetters in the stretch on a day when inside speed was dominant. I also have trouble ignoring the facts that she has never been out of the money at 6f, that she did as well as any stuck on Bel's dead rail last yr, & repeatedly throughout her career she has faced situations where it looked like others had better early speed. For whatever reason, in most of those cases she was able to get the lead, set slower fractions than those others typically ran, & such horses rarely passed her.

I also give KG a chance for the same reasons you do, & rightly or wrongly have been waiting to take a stand against Orientate for some time, not just for the reasons you hint at, which are perfectly valid, but also because I see many ways he can lose even if he is sound & not over the top. O does need the lead & I think a case can be made that he has never faced the kind of quality early speed he will face in this race & that he has rarely faced or beaten a quality sprinter in his 4 race skein.

What about an off the wall shot that nobody is considering or talking about? I was scratching my head when Touch Tone, who has always rated in sprints, got involved in a speed duel with Day Trader off a yr plus layoff, but now I'm wondering if the race was a logical conditioning move for an ex-quarter horse trainer who I think is very underrated. TT improved dramatically in his 2nd lifetime start, is lightly raced, & has the most upside of any horse in the race. He needs to make a huge fwd move, but who's to say that's impossible at 50-1? Not me, when he has the exact pattern I would be looking for if this was, as DP put it,on a Thurs card at Aqu.