Doug O'Neill Behind The Eight Ball

Can one fat ass beat the other in the Belmont?  That lady in the orange is Dale Romans wife btw.  It's been a little weird training wise, for who'd have guessed the coming training revolution in the sport would be spearheaded by these two lard buts?  It's a little like Nixon's visit to China.  The staunch anti-communist bad mouthing the evil empire and then his visit there to China in, what, 1971, starting the opening up of that closed Mao dictatorship to the West.  They said only an anti-communist like Nixon could have done it.

Belmont yesterday barn notes indicate Romans is preparing Dulahan with 2.5 mile gallops and "is aware" reportedly that it's necessary to train a horse to go 1.5 miles.  Michael Matz has obviously yet to get the message and we'll see whether Matz's talented horse can overcome his training.  Doubtful.

My point that O'Neill is behind the 8 ball has however nothing to do with Dale Romans.  Let's confide once again that Doug O'Neill has one of the most horrific injury rates I looked at on the blog 2 or 3 years ago.  The training in that stable is/was strictly a numbers game, if you want to call what they did training.

Now, suddenly, O'Neill has his little training epiphany with I'll Have Another, and who knows exactly how that happened.  However, anybody that's been on the race track quite a bit knows that O'Neill is pushing his horse. IHA has survived, so far.  The Q of the moment is how much longer can a horse do :14s for 2 miles every day (and, I have zero idea what they're really doing), and the horse lasts?  There are some ethical and, frankly, trainers license Qs involved in this. Expound next post.

Training:

15 min at 4.4 mph this morn.  Took it easy today.