Belmont Musings

Another incomplete handicapping job on this site. Getting a little irritated with myself displaying a fractured thought process that fails to consider everything. There "is" a "Belmont" website, had I bothered to check. The site contains videos that show my pick Chocolate Candy an obvious throw out, a distressed, away too skinny, tied up animal, showing questionable husbandry and exercise riding, and Holendorfer in some other world. Jet lag, claims Dorf. But we've seen this same act the last few years with several Dorf horses. CC ran like he's hurt. We'll see.

The rest of the race? I'll claim again, Hos Epi To Polu--got it right, "for the most part". In one sense I comprehended the generally inadequate training for the distance, but then failed to carry that thought to realize that the entire field would die at the 3/16 pole except the winner. As Desormeux noted, with the two in front of him clearly struggling, only a closer could have beaten Summer Bird. The only two trained for that, CC and Hot Stuff never ran a jump.

I'd agree with those who say Borel put insufficient work into the race, and maybe disagree that Borel moved to soon. Tom Durkin's call that Mine That Bird passed the field on the final turn like a shot simply was inaccurate. Instead of spurting to that point, Borel had made a measured steady move from mid back stretch and only started to spurt (or tried to) before they hit what would be the quarter pole on a normal track. Borel expected the same Derby 3f response at that point, but it was obvious that Borel was strenuously whipping the horse at the head of the stretch and failing to get a response. MTB was tied up and done at that point. Hillariously, I think Durkin lost sight of MTB, again, at the top of the final turn.

Where did they go wrong with MTB? Query whether the trainer and jock were together on instructions. There is nothing that I am able to see in the training that would have prepared MTB for the move he was asked to make. Running fairly hard for 1 1/8 mile then accelerating another 3f is what Borel expected. I question whether the horse was trained to do what he was being asked to do. Little details.

As to Dunkirk, it was fun to see the $3.7 million dollar horse and the $9,000.00 horse running nose to nose in the stretch. D ran a nice race, and if you're spending $$$ on a horse, that would be the type. Smart Plecher strategy possibly compromised by usual Plecher training? An interesting training note as I'm considering whether Pletcher does enough with his animals to maintain fracture resistance. I'm thinking "in the negative" (without any final conclusion)--and that you are unable to do what was done with Dunkirk and Charitable Man without getting an injury. Wondering whether either horse will ever race again.

Summer Bird? Everything came together for them. Can we say that of such ingredients are victories made? My fear that SB lacked long term bottom to compete in the stretch never became a factor as the horse basically ran uncontested to the wire, the rest of the field having tied up a furlong before. Nice training job and ride, imo.

RR stable post up later today or tomorrow.