I was hoping to be busy right now myself downloading the materials I was going to use with the package AB is sending to KY, but the brisnet site is down so here goes. AB could not have been more courteous or helpful, & you are very lucky to be working with him.

If Baffert and/or his vet are doing something outside the rules, I feel reasonably confident in saying that it is without the knowledge or participation of Robert McNair/Stonerside. He has invested a lot & done a lot & has a well deserved reputation for integrity. My opinion is that Baffert would be gone in a heartbeat if McNair believed that he was violating the rules. I'll see what I can find out re the EPO test, which I was also led to believe was imminent a no. of mos. ago. The vet angle is an interesting one, as it just doesn't make sense to me that a vet would risk his livlihood for the fees involved in administering EPO or some other prohibited substance. That has me wondering if trainers or their assts have figured out how to do it themselves, or are cutting the vets in for a piece of their percentage.

As for Congaree, twice in the past the horse had made 2pt plus forward moves, and one of those moves came at Aqu. He was also coming off a 9 and change 6f work. Detailed research I have seen indicates that a horse like Congaree is 1-2% to move fwd 2 pts and, oddly enough, 1-5% to make a big jump like he made. That made him an extraordinarily bad bet at the odds, but what he did is not completely w/o precedent.

On a truly unrelated note, the article you mentioned, which is also on the BH site, made Buddy Abadie sound like the kind of guy it would have been fun to know & spend a day with at the track, even though his research on the effect of weight was different than others. In contrast, published reports indicate that Jimmy The Hat doesn't even wear a hat & is almost bald, & that his other nickname is Jimmy The Mouth because he never shuts up when he's at the track. Add to that the fact that he used to be a stuntman on The Love Boat, together with his attorneys' decision to define the "class" to include everyone who has ever cashed a pk6, pk4, or pk3 bet at an Autotote track, and it seems that at best the lawsuit is going to be a circus sideshow to the main event, which continues to unfold at a much slower pace.