Animal Kingdom - maybe they needed Robbie Albarado

[menifee]

I think the remainder of this season will show that this is the best 3yr old.

JV's ride in the derby was awesome. Ride in the Preakness was horrible, how far back was he? Ride in the belmont was questionable. Trust me great athletic move to stay on the horse and not fall off. Also like that he didn't panic. But AK seems to be a one move closer. He moved way too soon on the horse. His ride reminds me of Borel's move on mine that bird in belmont. Horse completely flattened out.

[pandy]

Once he clipped heels and was that far back he wasn't going to win regardless of when he moved. My wife said it right, as soon as he clipped heels she said, "He's done. Only Zenyatta could win from there." To which I replied, "He ain't no Zenyatta."

[Robert Fischer]

hard to fault JV in the Belmont. Simply bad racing luck.
I was disapointed that Alan Garcia didn't keep the ride after winning the Lanes End. I think Garcia ended up on Soldat because of his loyalty to Mclaughlin. As great as Garcia is with strength, patience, and driving home a powerful horse, there isn't a whole lot more he could have done with the three races.
The Preakness was tough, and in hindsight it is easy to say that Animal Kingdom should have been allowed to join the pressers when the pace slowed down(rather than continue to take up the rear with Dialed In), but it happened very fast, and that track favored forward runners- and the pressers all got bottled up going into the turn. JV did a lot of riding in the Preakness to get through surprisingly well.

[toetoe]

Agreed that AK was doomed after he stumbled and JVel almost broke his face on AK's neck. The break wasn't perfect to begin with, but getting slammed by Mucho Macho the Menace changed the plan immediately, as often happens.

Astonishing that we heard nothing from Durkin about AK until he called him last about three furlongs later. The caketaker, however, was when the guys a sensible person would rather have his back plucked than listen to, Fightin' Frank Lyons and His Fawning Friends, started in on their postmortem:
"Aw, gee, it's too bad about Animal Kingdom. I guess he can't stay a mile and a half [!]."

Ya know, Frank Lyons is about as intelligible as Brad Pitt's character in "Snatch" to begin with, and when he manages to "accidentally" mention that he won a B.C. Sprint (calling J.J. Gracie ... :lol: ), he's nauseous. In their preview, they showed a graphic charting how horses coming out of the Tesio have fared in the Belmont. Very impressive results in a very small sample. Frank didn't like this year's Tesio runnerup. Fine.
Then they showed a chart of Europeans in the Belmont. Dismal indeed, also in a small sample. Go and Go won it, and another mediocrity finished second. All others out of the money, and I think two DNF's. So what did Frank say soon afterward ? Well, he was on and on about Master of Hounds, and his final brass-tacks rationale was that he was all about the Euros, because they did so well in past Belmonts. :confused:

[Dahoss9698]

I think the remainder of this season will show that this is the best 3yr old.

JV's ride in the derby was awesome. Ride in the Preakness was horrible, how far back was he? Ride in the belmont was questionable. Trust me great athletic move to stay on the horse and not fall off. Also like that he didn't panic. But AK seems to be a one move closer. He moved way too soon on the horse. His ride reminds me of Borel's move on mine that bird in belmont. Horse completely flattened out.

I'm a little confused. Johnny V's ride in the Preakness was horrible because he was too far back (despite getting shrugged off by the winner when he got close), yet today you say he moved too soon because the horse is a one run closer.

Seems like it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. I just think that in a very ordinary crop (being nice) like this these guys are going to take turns beating each other.

[nijinski]

I think the remainder of this season will show that this is the best 3yr old.

JV's ride in the derby was awesome. Ride in the Preakness was horrible, how far back was he? Ride in the belmont was questionable. Trust me great athletic move to stay on the horse and not fall off. Also like that he didn't panic. But AK seems to be a one move closer. He moved way too soon on the horse. His ride reminds me of Borel's move on mine that bird in belmont. Horse completely flattened out.
JV just had a very unfortunate start . Bumped at the start by MMM and then
clipping heels with Monzon. He really had little control at that point and just needed badly to get his foot back in the iron. AK was totally thrown off keel at the start indeed . I think JV handled the situation as best as any jockey could.
AK's race IMO is a total throw out. The horse that relished and was aided by the slop won today
and Animal Kingdom , if he hopefully stays sound still has a very good chance to redeem himself.

[pandy]

Once a track gets sloppy or muddy, and Belmont was both at one time or another yesterday, it changes some of the results. It's just like racing on a synthetic surface or on turf, slop or mud does not produce the same results as a fast dirt track. That's why I prefer to see the Breeders Cup raced in California, preferably at Santa Anita if the can ever get that track fixed up.

That being said I thought Animal Kingdom ran a big race yesterday, his middle-move was huge and he finished courageously considering the trip.

[OTM Al]

I think the remainder of this season will show that this is the best 3yr old.

JV's ride in the derby was awesome. Ride in the Preakness was horrible, how far back was he? Ride in the belmont was questionable. Trust me great athletic move to stay on the horse and not fall off. Also like that he didn't panic. But AK seems to be a one move closer. He moved way too soon on the horse. His ride reminds me of Borel's move on mine that bird in belmont. Horse completely flattened out.

The guy rode a quarter of the race out of the irons and it's amazing he got that far. To make it to 6th was an incredible job. Trust me. I was standing in the winner's circle to watch the race and the incident happened not 50 feet from where I was standing. You could see his far leg starting to come over. He was completely taken out of the race and there are some that think the takeout was intentional but hit the wrong target. You want the answers to that one though, go back to the PPs and look a little more closely because I'm not saying any more on that one.