Preakness Thoughts

The Preakness is upon us. This year my interest is abnormally low as this group of trainers both fails to excite in any way with their methods, or generate any real interest for their horses. What I know about the race is from a glance. Coverage of the race, similar to the Derby, seems to have shrunk enormously, and we see almost zero video of the horses or their preparation, such as it is.

All I have observed is that the lesser horses in terms of accomplishment are somewhat being put through their paces--Jackson Bend, e.g., and so, if you like pre-race fast breezing, that sort of thing will catch the attention. And, the front runners are being subjected to powder puff training to the point they barely see the race track. Can Super Saver, e.g. possibly be up to his snuff off of a few 1 1/8 mile gentle gallops, one little 3f breeze which I applaud, and "jogging" for crying out loud, on Wed. before the race. Good looking horse, though, and the type talented enough to overcome this nonsense. The recently challenged Lucky under Baffert will go into the race with zero works and from the one photo looks the part of a horse who'se done very little this year. Injury possibly? This is very un-Baffert like. While you'd be tempted to put some coins on Lucky, can this be done rationally with the non-training?

Again, I've just glanced at this, but the one horse that catches my attention is Dublin. You know Lukas is motivated, and I agree with Lukas that he's a decent horse talent wise. And, Garrett Gomez on Dublin will be pumped. I'll probably take a little closer look in the morning.

Training:
Blow up this one at left you'll see the senior citizen mouse murderer resting by the latest water puddle contemplating, I guess, jumping in for a swim or possibly planning the next homicide. But, catch up on our training.

3 inches of rain so far this week + 3 or 4 more days coming. Essentially we've had another 10 days taken away by mud. The prior week was a very hard training week. We ran the horses fast riderless 3 out of 4 straight days at some volume, and were finally able to get in some galloping last Monday. Two days of galloping this year with our ground conditions. This week since Mon. has been so wet we've yet to do anything, and will start again tonight, Fri.