Jim,

Jurmala was nice enough to post Charismatic's numbers. My read of this pattern was that the horse was definitely fast enough to win the race, but there were a few factors which led me to toss him.

The leap to the 3 range was huge, much like the leap War Emblem had in this past year's campaign. There wasn't much in the way of gradual development to the better figures. There was a short break after the 8's and then boom, 3's.

After his first big race, he ran (I think) in the Lexington on short rest (less than 2 weeks?) and paired it. I would've played him to back up off the first 3 in the Lexington and I would've lost, but with those two big races coming so close together and then the Derby was (again excuse me if I'm a little off) two weeks later, I figured that would be that and he would bounce of the pair of big races that were so out of line with this early spring figures.

I would say the lesson here is that these are some of the usual sheet/pattern reading principles, but they probably don't apply to Lukas or Baffert 3yos coming into the Derby.

War Emblem had better spacing of his spring races but many of the same points apply, and he managed to pop the third big race in a row in the Derby too.

Sorry about all the other stuff with JJ, but sometimes I can't resist. HP