Rapid Redux

[AlbertButtry]

I am shocked. They shouldn't even worry about running second. He has won 20 in a row.

[FenceBored]

Originally Posted by OntheRail

Snip-it

NEW ORLEANS – Rapid Redux will not be shipped from Pennsylvania to New Orleans for the Dec. 3 Claiming Crown, owner Robert Cole said Saturday.

Rapid Redux was pre-entered in the $50,000 Iron Horse, and Cole said the expense of traveling for the race was too great to make the journey.

“It’s $13,000 to ship with plane transfer, and that made no sense at all,” said Cole. “If you run second, you lose $7,000.”


http://www.drf.com/news/rapid-redux-...claiming-crown

Have they thought of shipping by river boat/barge straight down the Ohio & Mississippi to New Orleans? Should be cheaper.

[cj]

Originally Posted by FenceBored

Have they thought of shipping by river boat/barge straight down the Ohio & Mississippi to New Orleans? Should be cheaper.

They were never going to run. It would be actual competition there.

[FenceBored]

Originally Posted by cj

They were never going to run. It would be actual competition there.

I realize that, I'm just having fun.

The saddest thing is this takes the heat of off John Shirreff's for his famous "we have to ship across the Rockies" remark. We have a new winner in the Lamest Excuses For Not Shipping Sweepstakes.

[cj]

Originally Posted by FenceBored

I realize that, I'm just having fun.

The saddest thing is this takes the heat of off John Shirreff's for his famous "we have to ship across the Rockies" remark. We have a new winner in the Lamest Excuses For Not Shipping Sweepstakes.

Maybe they can make a new Eclipse Award for stuff like this. I'll nominate King Leatherbury for trying to get a syndicate together to supplement Ben's Cat to the BC Turf Sprint.

[Valuist]

I just checked the FG entries for the Claiming Crown card and I didn't see Rapid Redux in the entries.

Misprint? After all he's the UNDISPUTED KING of starter races right?

Wrong. The competition would be tougher when its more than 5 horse fields of mid-Atlantic H5000 types. The connections are crap. As far as I'm concerned, this horse is a 100% fraud. If they had any credibility, they'd have run in the Claiming Crown.

I didn't originally see CJ's post above mine. I guess Shirreffs was planning on shipping via covered wagon. I wasn't aware that travel across the Rockies was so treacherous. Maybe Shirreffs is still living in the mid 19th Century.

[firstoffclaim]

Winning 20 races in a row and he is a "complete fraud"?

[cj]

Originally Posted by firstoffclaim

Winning 20 races in a row and he is a "complete fraud"?

The horse, of course, is not a fraud. What is fraudulent is the winning streak, at least the last three or four races.

[lamboguy]

Rapid Redux is only a 5 year old, but you can see he has lost his fastball since the end of june. if they stopped with him now and tried to bring him back next spring, i am not sure he could could beat a field with non-winners of 6 months in it.

for sure it was exciting watching him perform the last 6 months. he has his record now, and maybe its time for a trip to horseman's park to let the horse enjoy the rest of his life real soon.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by FenceBored

The saddest thing is this takes the heat of off John Shirreff's for his famous "we have to ship across the Rockies" remark. We have a new winner in the Lamest Excuses For Not Shipping Sweepstakes.

Or you could ship all over the place and take on a lot of tough assignments and wind up with a horse that either can't make it to the Breeder's Cup (like Rachel and Blind Luck), that doesn't hold their peak form for the big dance (like Havre De Grace), or that's not the same horse the next year (like Rachel).

You can't have it both ways.

The more you run and the tougher the assignments the faster the average horse is going to slowly wear down or accumulate injuries that shorten its peak form or end its career.

In the modern game, the Breeder's Cup carries enormous weight for year end honors and breeding value.

So the idea is to have a well spaced campaign against high level competition without making demands on the horse that will prevent it from peaking at the end of the year when it counts.

The rest of it is a debate about whether a trainer did a good or bad job trying to accomplish that with a particular horse because each is unique in what it can handle and the number of minor injuries it has.

Handling high level horses is different than handling low level horses.

In the latter case, the cost of shipping might make it dumb to ship.

[Valuist]

Originally Posted by cj

The horse, of course, is not a fraud. What is fraudulent is the winning streak, at least the last three or four races.

That's probably the way I should've worded it. My gripe wasn't with the horse; just the connections, and the streak.

[OntheRail]

Originally Posted by cj

The horse, of course, is not a fraud. What is fraudulent is the winning streak, at least the last three or four races.

Is it any more manufactured then Zenyatta's rise to 19 over a very cherry picked map over a four year stretch? She gained most of her creditability in her last race for many... not the cream puff filled so called graded races. I think he's a cool horse with allot of heart... . I hope he lives a long and happy life.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by OntheRail

Is it any more manufactured then Zenyatta's rise to 19 over a very cherry picked map over a four year stretch? She gained most of her creditability in her last race for many... not the cream puff filled so called graded races. I think he's a cool horse with allot of heart... . I hope he lives a long and happy life.

It's different in that the primary motivation for the connections of Rapid Redux is keeping the horse in races where no one better than him can possibly face the horse and beat it.

The primary motivation of the Zenyatta camp was to keep the horse fresh enough to be at her peak to take on the biggest possible challenge on the biggest possible stage at the end of the year.

She was entered in all the Grade 1 races for mares with high purses in CA. So anyone could have come in to take her on. But over the latter part of her career a few solid CA based fillies and mares shipped out to avoid her and no one came in to challenge her. So she would up in few very weak fields. It's not so unusual for a champion caliber horse to catch a few weak fields along the way, but she caught a few extra because they were avoiding her and it was a bad crop.

That was not the case in 2008 when she even shipped out once to face the prior year's Eclipse award winning mare before she had even peaked and the CA circuit was a bit stronger.

I think her streak was mostly a matter of her innate ability, the desire of the owner/trainer to win the Classic (twice), and a randomly bad group of horses on the circuit in 2010, but she might have run it up against a consistently better group of fillies and mares anyway given how she ran in both Classics.

[Bruiser1]

I'll tell you this....one of Zenyatta's races at Del Mar was a head bobber to an over matched fiilly (on paper). The truth is she could have just as easily lost that photo as she won it. If she had been second best that day, it wouldn't have diminished what a great champion she was. All it would have done was take away the winning streak.

To win 20 races in a row at any level takes ability (for the level), planning by the human connections (as in picking your spots), and lots of luck. To do it in a year?

I know there will always be bashers of any streak, but regardless of circumstances, it's something we probably won't see again in this lifetime.

[FenceBored]

Uh oh, don't let cj see this.

By Jason Shandler
Updated: Thursday, December 8, 2011 2:12 PM
Posted: Thursday, December 8, 2011 2:08 PM

Racing history could be made at Laurel Park Dec. 13, as Rapid Redux looks to tie the all-time North American record for victories in a calendar year when he starts in the sixth race, a $17,000 starter allowance.

Citation currently holds the single-season record with 19 wins in 20 starts in 1948, the year he captured the Triple Crown. Rapid Redux is a perfect 18-of-18 in 2011 and last month tied the record for most consecutive wins overall with 19.

Read more: http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-raci...#ixzz1fyNNrhdb

Man, Shandler's trying to make Hovdey look good. Since he's not here, I'll be embarrassed for him.