Miff,

You are the first person I've heard describe his gait as long. Everything else I've heard describes it as extremely average, but somehow he just keeps going, which is yet another reason I'm suspicious of his ability to perform well over a more demanding surface.

And completely disagree with your assertion that horses that "can't get the distance" consistently will have the same results on different types of tracks. There are any number of surface-aided route wins by horses at certain tracks like SA, GP, or MTH that never would have occurred at other places.

Sometimes surface matters, and sometimes it does not. But to suggest that it never matters and numbers can just plug-and-play and be expected to be duplicated at other track every time is ridiculous. P-Dub listed horses in a different response where surface did not matter (most of them before the synth was put in at SA, making it fairly irrelevant to this discussion, but whatever) and that's all well and good, but for every horse that is able to duplicate their efforts over a very different track type, you can probably find one that fails.

I'm not suggesting there aren't horses that can run well on both types of tracks, there clearly are. But, there are also any number of examples of horses that only ran well over glib surfaces and struggled at more demanding locations. Game On Dude won races all over SoCal and did his best work at SA, yet he failed on 3 different attempts at CD.

CC has run races lower than 7 at 2 different tracks, and I really don't care about any of his races above 7. One of those was a 7F sprint at HOL. The rest were at Santa Anita.

He has not done anything to yet demonstrate he would handle a demanding course like CD, but also get that he really hasn't done anything to prove he couldn't. I'm not saying he can't, only that I'm going to be highly suspicious of his ability to do it for a number of reasons, and if that puts me in the minority, then so be it.

If he had run -3 and were 4 points better than everyone else, then I would get all this hype. But given the info TGJB has shared with us about the SA Derby, there are what.. 6 or 7 other horses all within a point of him already at least? Unless your sole method of handicapping is how many lengths a horse won by and you completely discrediting close finishes involving multiple horses, it seems like irrational exuberance.