Quote:
Originally Posted by Elliott Sidewater
Announcing claims pre-race would do nothing to indicate the soundness of a horse. I remember a race at Parx where R Dutrow shipped a semi-suspicious dropper (named Not For Money) from NY to compete for a jacked up purse on an Owners Appreciation Day. I've never seen the area near the claim box so busy. There were 16 claims in for the horse, who finished a well beaten third in a field of 8. I know all this because we claimed a different horse out of the same race, and were the only ones in the box for him.
It took 8 more races and 4 months before Not For Money won again.
In my opinion, you'd get a better idea of how well meant a claimer is by counting the number of people with the horse in the paddock above the trainer and groom. When I owned horses, whenever I had one in that I thought had a good chance to win, I was at the track, and in the paddock if at all possible. This is by no means reliable, but it's still a hell of a lot better than knowing how many other people were thinking the same way about claiming a horse. That has close to ZERO value.
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Trying to follow your logic here so maybe after my questions you can respond. There are many times when we race where I invite a friend or two that never was in the paddock area and wanted to see the interactions with the trainer and the groom and the jock. We recently ran a claimer at Parx last Saturday that finished 4th, the big favorite had a trainer and a groom no more no less, so my question is if you load up the paddock area with people the general consensus is that horse was meant to win that race? You also mention the NY horses coming in, Parx has been a dumping ground for drop down NY horses for ever. Some will tell you due to the strict NY rules and regulations regarding certain race prep medications others will tell you NY is too competitive. I wouldn't take any NY horse coming in even if it looked like the claim of the century. last but not least is the announcement of claimed horses prior to the race going off, that is done in standard breds and wouldn't mean anything in t-breds, soundness cant be assured by a claim or two in on a certain horse. as you know from being in the game, "buyer beware".