Sun. Misc.

In the "never thought I'd live to see the day" category how about Ron The Greek's racing strategy in yesterday's Santa Anita Handicap?

Come out of the gate moderately to avoid taking your horse's air away and permit the horse to physiologically get into the race, take off entering the back stretch after this significant warm up, pass horses like they're tied to a post with a brief sprint on the backstretch,and then slow it down into the final turn to permit horse to catch it's breath and start final run at about the 2.5f.

That's always been my plan should I ever have a decent horse in a long race, and here in 2012 I get to finally see it on the race track. Yes, it worked (to perfection.) Why does this seem the ideal race strategy? The strategy contains two 2.5f runs with chance to catch breath in the middle instead of a lengthy 4f run where the horse goes rubber legged toward the end. Combined with easy out of the gate to avoid quick muscle lock up and breathing distress due to inappropriate warm ups, this is what you do. Street Sense did a version of it in the KY Derby in that he started his run entering the backstretch, although SS probably did a long slow steady job instead of two bursts as did Ron The Greek yesterday.

Best horse in the SA Handicap obviously was Ultimate Eagle of whose performance I thought so much I feature him in the vid above instead of the winner. When u run a 1:34 mile u've got a very superior horse even if, guessing, it seems UE's connections thought they were in a sprint race.

And, hmmmmm, let's see, for the runners finishing 1-2-3 in the SA Handicap we have horses by the great stallions Mizzen Mast (Fee $12,000), Pleasantly Perfect ($10,000) and Full Mandate ("Stallion Page Cannot Be Found").