Quote:
Originally Posted by classhandicapper
The one thing I like about him is that he seems to have a higher cruising speed than most other horses with similar ability. When he goes out fast he tires a little late but so do the horses chasing him. The Preakness was the one exception, but who knows what was going on during that period.
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My theory (I know, I know), is that the effect of the PED's is to allow these horses to survive fast paces in route races. Think of Game on Dude at his best. Or Justify. Or Authentic. In all of those cases, what you would see is a horse facing pace pressure and then drawing off anyway. It's not that this never happens without the PED's- there are celebrated examples of it (one that was locally famous in Southern California was Riva Ridge in the 1972 Hollywood Derby, where several different horses engaged him and he just fought them all off for 1 1/4 miles). But the number of different Baffert stakes stars who managed to do this is, to my mind, extremely suspicious. And, by the way, Maximum Security, whom we pretty much know Servis was doping, did the same thing.
So of course, who knows what Medina Spirit is or isn't getting now. But his Derby performance looks like a typical Baffert Derby performance- all those horses (including Essential Quality, who is clearly the best 3 year old in the country!) lined right up alongside of him at the top of the stretch, and he just pulled away the last 3/16th of a mile. That's the external help.
