IHA Training Postscript

One of the great TC race performances goes down the tubes. What a shame! Congratulate Doug O'Neill for having  I'll Have Another absolutely primed for the Kentucky Derby, had a nice pre-Preakness training period where, instead of putting the horse under wraps as so many, O'Neill continued to vigorously train the horse, likely too much, and then, somewhere along the road, if u want to psychoanalyze the trainer and the methods, O'Neill literally lost his mind.

Here is a fellow that can talk to Billy Turner as to how Seattle Slew trained, comment on Lucien Lauren and the training of Secretariat, acknowledge Max Hirsch and Assault, and fail to get anything at all out of how those horses succeeded.

With O'Neill and his massive failure to understand performance and injury prevention, it went deeper than that.  Anybody that's been on a race track for any length of time knows that if you're going to two minute lick a horse every day you're going to injure that horse.  There was some Q in my mind since at Belmont they basically reserved the speed to just 4 fairly slow furlongs.  This is unknown territory to me and everybody else since nobody to my knowledge has ever beat on a horse this many consecutive days with a 150+ lbs rider on board around lengthy turns.  Maybe the horse's legs could take this since I am able to testify as to those stout stout Arch legs..  As it turns out, obviously otherwise.  And decline to swallow that "rapped himself" excuse since that just never happens. + by my recollect, the horse wears bandages.

My guess is that the injury is worse than advertised. How many horses have a trained with a little tendon puffiness one day and three days later they're back tight and back to training?  In the end I'll Have Another serves to remind that instead of training egg shells we're training egg yolk membranes.  The first part of wining the TC or any other race is to keep on the track healthy.  Somewhere O'Neill forgot that or perhaps has never understood Rule #1.

So, who will take the Belmont? Can they catch Paynter, who, with all due regard to the experts is hardly (look at him) a Bodemeister.  I'd think so. This should be a Dullahan runaway for a number of reasons. Rags has failed to do enough, failed to train at Belmont, has shown some laziness that he'll likely--if Matz can keep that horse healthy--need one more race to get back to form.  I think Rags will tie up short of the wire. Dullahan will be close to the pace and I see zero reason to bet against that good looking horse with the most appropriate training in this field

The rest of the field are throw outs with Street Life and Adonis having slight chances to break into the top three.  Barring unforseen developments those two simply lack the class of the top three.  Ditto rest of the field.  This is one where I'd try various tri-fecta, exacta combos.  I'm almost tempted to drive up to Des Moines and make a few bets I am so confident in the top three.  As always, will see.