Judge for yourself but throughout these preps theres been few consistent horses. To my mind they are:

Smarty Jones
Borrego
The Cliff's Edge
Lionheart
Pollard's Vision
Master David
Imperialism
Limehouse

Less consistent have been

Tapit
Swingforthefences
Value Plus
Eddington
Sinister G.
Birdstone
Wimbledon
St.Averil
Preachinatthebar

With the exception of Smarty Jones even the consistent have multiple losses. The main point of which is to say anyone ducking this Derby just doesn't have much courage. JoeB. is correct this has potential for a Gato Del Sol year.

Its not an observation that is universal with this bunch, but when you look for a reason for the inconsistency its interesting that lack of foundation, especially significant two year old foundation is present in many of the inconsistent horses. Many of the more consistent horses seem to have more foundation.

I think its pretty clear that Wimbledon's Louisana Derby was a bang up race. There were some good horses in there and he really handled them. Theres been plenty of other horses to get beat 10 lengths and come back strong in their next. Hansel, Tabasco Cat, The Lemon Drop Kid. The list is long, my memory is short...lol If Californias battlers go Derby I think you'll see better races from them there.

I've read Tapit may be favored. His new style is to drop way back and make a run that gets odd looking in the stamina testing portion of a race. In a 20 horse field, I don't see that running style discouraging any but the weak hearted. I really don't think he was crowd gawking last. It doesn't explain the bearing in. If he was crowd gawking Churchill is gonna give him a heart attack.

Theres gotta be a Sun Cat in here some where.

CtC



Post Edited (04-11-04 13:00)