Belmont Results

A seemingly decent fellow and mostly highly questionable trainer wins the Belmont. Congrats to Mott for a superior training job with Drosselmeyer, and also to Winstar in the fairly spectacular achievement of winning two legs of the TC with different horses. How often has that been done?

The struggling First Dude anchored things all the way around and made this interesting race visually. All others excepting Stay Put, who put in a brief spurt, merely maintained position on what looked to me like a deep and difficult racing surface. Mike Smith never extended his mount except in the exact moment when it counted and gets the credit for a very superior ride.

In a last flurried moment of video watching that I posted 10 MTP, I'd pegged First Dude as the talent in this race, but all the things you identify in that video and the PPs came to pass. You might ask where was the fireball First Dude from the Preakness. This weakly trained horse--and I'll differ respectfully with Tom Durkin's call on this--was galloping weakly from the get go his head bobbing too low with every stride. Unlike Big Brown, First Dude was never trained to carry the field along a little faster than its aerobic steady state, and so all the other horses were fairly easily able to keep pace.

First Dude suffered from one other problem that is visible in all his races. The horse changes leads into the stretch way too early--in this race it was 2-3 strides before the rest of the field. This becomes very telling in terms of right lead leg fatigue late in the stretch run. The jock, Dominguez seemed completely oblivious as obviously is the trainer. But I already dissed Dale Romans in my Friday post. This horse would be all world under Nafzger.

How did I do with my handicapping? I pulled this one out of my jock strap at the last minute by putting $2.00 on First Dude to show. The post on Friday identified Drosselmyer, Game One Dude and Make Music For Me as the best trained horses. Since MMFM lost a shoe--and what's with that? How does that happen? I'm unable to positively say this would never happen to me, but it would be highly unlikely--his performance is understandable. Otherwise, the conditioning handicapping played fairly true.

So, what of Fly Down? Very decent horse that overcomes Zito handling in this race. It'll never last, and that's guaranteed. A lightly hoofed talented horse is going to have an advantage on that deep track, and big hoofed horses such as Stately Victor and First Dude will struggle.

With Ice Box the hints for that performance were all over the place. Every video of Ice Box shows the horse in a hobby horse gallop, with an idiot exercise rider that never gives the horse his head and was constantly on the wrong lead. This occurs when you have a trainer who is more used car salesman than conditioner. How can you expect a horse to run when you hardly ever let the horse run in practice?

Uptown's Charlies' loss of saddle pad. Is this also a first? A video of McGlaughlin in the paddock would be interesting.

Bill Mott has gone into big race after big race with powder puff training. He ratchetted up with Drosselmeyer, and for once the best trained horse did win! Will watch Mott's future training with interest!

Training:

Thurs. lost the tack work due to applying lost shoe. Got in 30f riderless in the mud with frequent spurts.

Fri. June 4: 1.25 mile trot with a few strides of gallop. Much spooking. Better than Wed though! We then did 5 or 6 riderless 3f spurts. Very tough w/o!

Sat. June 5: Off