Handicapping The Preakness

RR pick! (dry track)









Handicapping, with quibbles.

1. Lukas horses out. Flying Private has talent.

2. Expect Musket Man and Take the points to stop and take a nap at the quarter pole. The Saturday (middle of the night) shippers. Out. I've seen some dumb stunts at Eureka. This ranks right up there.

3. Big Drama beat West Side Bernie by a length. Need more be said. Out.

4. Lesser training, lesser talents are out. Terrain, Tone It Down, General Quarters (though sensing an effort here.)

5. Five left standing: Rachel,Pioneer, FF, Papa, MTB.

6. Friesan Fire: The Derby was a nice prep, but objective/comparative view of his videos show a lesser talent. Out.

7. For the rest: compare speed fractions(the horse's probable best effort at each call). Rachel e.g. has run a 1:35.1 mile but failed to win that race. Her probable best effort is a 1:36:3 by this definition.). Rachel's bests show as 23.2,47.2, 1:11.4, 1:36.3.

9. FF shows best at 23.1. MTB shows best at 45.4. MTB shows best at 1:10.1. Papa C shows 1:36. Rachel at 1:36.3. Pioneer and MTB show 1:36.3 bests. FF worst at 1:37.3

10. Rachel has ability and a weight advantage that becomes geometric on a heavy track. She also has the weakest contender training Oaks to Preakness, basically runs :12s, has already undergone one operation, and has numerous obvious disadvantages going into the race. Borel will drive her, beyond her capability based on training imo. Out.

13. MTB Preakness training puts most of the others too shame. But they crossed the line. Too much. Out.

14. The real second place finisher (but for the Pioneer bump/cutoff) of the Derby and deepest trained horse is Papa Clem. The videos show that Stute has trained the horse from an early lesser talent to a horse that will run wire to wire with max effort. Tough call if it in fact comes down to Clem and Pioneer. Photo above is talking.