Chuckles - This may be preaching to the choir but keep in mind that looking at the fractional times can be very misleading.

There are different runups for 9f vs. 8.5f and the different fractions are run on the turn for 9f vs. 8.5f. Also, with young, lightly-raced 3yos 9f is significantly more taxing than 8.5f (particularly in the final 1/8th). Additionally, note that differences in weight and ground-loss are not taken into account in the raw fractional times.

Not to mention the possibility of the track changing speeds, split variants, etc.

All that makes the comparing fractions (and even final times) between the 9f race and other 8.5f races even on the same day very tricky and potentially misleading.

Fortunately, we can just let TG worry about all that (at least the stuff that relates to the final figure).

I certianly did not mean to imply that I thought Shaniko is faster now than SFTF or RTF or a bunch of others in the future book. Just that he is lightly-raced with a solid,forward-moving line that seems capable of the improvement needed to win the Derby and that his sheet looks a lot more like the recent top Derby finishers than do the sheets of the other faster horses such as RTF or most of the other horses listed in the Future book. In fact, based on past history, the fastest horses in Feb. don't usually run that well in the Derby.

Chris