Two interesting firsters today

[RXB]

Aqu 4th - Fight Like A Pro ships in from Pimlico with some good workouts for a strong barn and is bred to be fast. The horses that have already ran haven't shown much and there are many horses in this race that are either bred poorly or bred for routing rather than sprinting. I also think Ernie's Choice might have a shot here but Fight Like A Pro looks best. 5/1 on the ML, I'll take 4/1 if the horse looks okay on the track.

Crc 9th - Capitulation is only 3/1 ML and I won't be betting unless it's at least 5/2 when they're loading into the gate, so this one might end up being passed due to low odds. Distorted Humor to a Full Out mare looks pretty good, the trainer and jockey are both strong, the workouts looks fine and the outside post is nice, too. The only others that give me cause for pause are Trumpets For Glory and Captiva Bay, and I think they'll both want a bit more distance than 6f.

[RXB]

No plays in either race.

Fight Like A Pro went off below my 4/1 requirement, but even if he had been 4/1 he wasn't going to get my money anyway. He was swishing his tail back and forth steadily in the paddock, was overly anxious going to the gate and it took almost a full minute for the assistant starters to get him loaded. The other 1st-timer that interested me, Ernie's Choice, ran second to another firster whose breeding said turf route, not dirt sprint. I guess that's why he was 30/1.

No such problems with Capitulation in the Crc race as he looked good physically and was calm and collected. Alas, he went to the gate at 1/1 so my money stayed in my pocket in that race, too. He won by five lengths.

[andicap]

You seem to know breeding pretty well.

What's your opinion of Lauren Stich's stuff?
I like her, but wonder about one thing: she's always redboarding picks. "such and such was bred to be fast and won last week at 12-1 odds. How did the crowd let him go off that high?"

Well, did SHE have him?

[RXB]

I haven't read much of Lauren Stich's stuff. Basically, I've watched and handicapped a lot of races from a lot of tracks in the last dozen years or so, and I've gleaned my breeding info from that experience. I'm no expert, but I do okay with what I know.

From what I have read of her writings (probably about 20-30 pages in total), I can't say that I felt tremendously enlightened by it. I have no desire to go back five generations into a horse's pedigree, so the fact that the dam's dam's dam's dam's dam won the 1949 Prix de Femme is going to remain unknown to me.

One claim that I find absurd is her estimation that 80% or more of a thoroughbred's class is determined from only the female lineage of the dam. She says that the sire's male lineage determines the surface/distance preferences of the progeny and little else. If that were the case, why bother with expensive stallions? Just take your classy dam to a relatively cheap yet versatile sire like Slewdledo, pay the $2750, and save yourself the extra $297,250 it would've cost you to breed to AP Indy. Doesn't quite work that way.

I have a friend who I think I can safely refer to as a "breeding expert." He really knows his stuff. However, he knows little else about the game. He forces bets on first-timers and on horses switching to the grass for the first time because he is ideologically bound to them and he doesn't know enough about the rest of the game to make comprehensive decisions. I would guess that Ms. Stich is in a rather similar situation.

I have to say, I find the Tomlinson numbers in the DRF to be not very helpful. Same with any other stats that give debut or grass stats without relating any information on the class level at which the wins are achieved. E.g., Noactor is a Florida sire who gets a fairly high % of debut winners, but they are achieved almost exclusively in cheap maiden claiming races. His progeny are precocious but have very little class (they also tend to be nutty). So when a Noactor colt showed up in that Crc MSW race yesterday (the one where the Distorted Humor horse romped) I tossed the poor beast without a moment's hesitation. Put that same colt in a bottom-barrel MCL race-- where it belongs-- and it probably figures to be a contender.