Belmont Miscellaney

What a neat looking horse!

Twice this year trainer Kelly Breen's horses have strongly galloped around the race track right past talented fields. Pants On Fire in Louisiana and now Ruler On Ice. Given my low opinion of Breen training, what gives? --blogger buys DRF Belmont PPs.

Just wasted $2.95.
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What shows --- Ruler On Ice: 5f in 1:01 at Monmouth on 6/4 and 5f in 1:00 at Monmouth on 5/27. Then you go back to a mile 1/16 race on May 7. This horse did less public speed work than Derby horses.

Now, looking at these PPs, may we observe that none of these horses received an advantage strictly due to training based on published speed work. Sort of hilariously, they all trained, with slight variance here and there, exactly the same, making this Belmont possibly a measure of other performance variables besides their training. Take note as always that the off day training is unknown--although, when you consider--that the nearly identical speed work of these trainers might also translate to near identical slow day work.

What intrigues me about Ruler On Ice is how strongly this horse galloped 1.5 miles and finishing like he could skip on for another mile before tiring--on training this light. Per Kiaren McGlaughlin says: why do more when less will do.

But, then, there's also that nagging fact that Pants On Fire was injured in that La race probably permanently. More on ROI training later. A few Belmont observations below:

Belmont Coverage: There must be a law that prevents Blood Horse.com from providing more than 120 sec./day of video coverage. My Q: why bother to send Lenny Schulman and Stable Boy all the way to NY for a 60 sec./day spot?

Belmont Coverage: Belmont race coverage on Sports Illustrated.com and even Huffington Post but without race videos. Where are you Alex Waldrop?

Ghosts of Fusaichi Pegasus and Saratoga Six in Ruler On Ice. With patience the good ones come to fore in the breeding shed.? Is ROI an advertisement for holding off the gelding?

Shackelford: ROI pressing him all the way around the race track, and, does the lead horse use up more energy when being pressed (?), inefficient head bobbing stride possibly caused by his heavy front end (compare S stride to AK stride!) S gave way in a slow pace. Maybe S is other than a 1.5 mile horse. Maybe training and track conditions did very little for this big hoofed animal.

The list of trainers in this race in the DRF PPs: other than the Kentucky Derby Or Bust training hall of fame.

Master of Hounds: predictably from that short vid of him galloping Friday--completely discombobulated What were they thinking? This is the infamous trainer of George Washington, but, on consideration, probably when John Magnier says "jump" Aiden O'Brien says "how high" (which is the sort of owner-trainer relationship I always advocate.)

Mucho Macho Man done by quarter pole. Would plastic shoes give ideal ground contact with this sort of surface? For that matter, while the concept of cushioning track concussion seems wise at first blush, do horses need that firm "thud" of hard ground contact to efficiently push off. Plastic seems a good idea for a hard surface. Have trouble visualizing its good use on a deep sandy track. More to do with MMM than the shoes, but, leave it alone for now.

Animal Kingdon--after watching the start of the race 4 or 5 times, that stumble looked a whole lot worse than it actually was. I'd guess the jock took it easy on the horse to make sure he was OK after that. In final analysis AK was able to actually run about 2f which by my calculation was right up to his training. A waste of tremendous talent in this particular barn imho.

Was the surprise result typical off track stuff? Or, is ROI that good?

Training:
Fri 6/10: Off
Sat. 6/11: riderless paddock work included 2 x 2f full speed bursts + 3 time trot gallop up and down the hill. When the horse threatened to buck Nob aborted.