Goldencents

[Striker]

Originally Posted by letswastemoney

Breeding is an overrated factor in the Kentucky Derby. It's the one race where everyone places a premium on breeding, when horses that were sired by sprinters like Elusive Quality still went on to win.

Gone West, EQ's sire, had sired some pretty good horses and ones that had no problem in the classic distances, so that factors into Smarty's breeding. When you go a little farther into his female line the stamina influences are found, which is why his dosage was 3.4, which is below that 4.00 guideline used by most.

[Valuist]

Originally Posted by Tread

Funny Cide and Smarty weren't supposed to be able to route? Are you just going to blatantly make stuff up for this discussion?

Funny Cide had a DI of 1.53 and a CD of 0.46. His dam sire AWD was 8.5F. There is absolutely nothing in that pedigree that suggests he would have any trouble at a route. Unless you take a complete simpleton view of saying "oh he's by Distorted Humor and he produces a bunch of sprint winners".

I just addressed Smarty's pedigree in the post above, and you are using it as a negative, and I have a reading comprehension problem? A dam sire AWD of 8.5F is higher than ANY of the Derby contenders you will see this year, and Elusive Quality's 7.6F is nearly a full furlong better than both sides of Goldencent's pedigree.

And yes, when you sit just behind the pace of a horse who is 1/5 to stop badly in the stretch of a 9F race over a ridiculously speed favoring strip and nothing else within 6 lengths of you other than a horse with an injured knee, trips do not get any more dreamier than that.

If we have a field of contenders challenged by their breeding to get 10 furlongs, it only strengthens the case of those who can handle 9f like Goldencents and Normandy Invasion.

[Tread]

Goldencents can "handle" 9F only if the surface is extremely glib and does not contain any other (fully healthy) GSWs, but you only need to go one race back to see a case where he cannot even handle 8.5F under more normal conditions with a fairer track.

At Churchill, where the surface will much more resemble something like AQU than it will SA, at 10F, in a race full of other GSWs and other speed horses capable of actually carrying their speed past 7.5F, he does not stand a chance. Horses can outrun pedigrees with as many factors as Goldencents had in his favor last Saturday, but not in a fair fight against so many other good horses.

[cj]

Originally Posted by Tread

Goldencents can "handle" 9F only if the surface is extremely glib and does not contain any other (fully healthy) GSWs, but you only need to go one race back to see a case where he cannot even handle 8.5F under more normal conditions with a fairer track.

At Churchill, where the surface will much more resemble something like AQU than it will SA, at 10F, in a race full of other GSWs and other speed horses capable of actually carrying their speed past 7.5F, he does not stand a chance. Horses can outrun pedigrees with as many factors as Goldencents had in his favor last Saturday, but not in a fair fight against so many other good horses.

It isn't like California horses have performed poorly at Churchill over the years.

[Valuist]

Originally Posted by Tread

Goldencents can "handle" 9F only if the surface is extremely glib and does not contain any other (fully healthy) GSWs, but you only need to go one race back to see a case where he cannot even handle 8.5F under more normal conditions with a fairer track.

At Churchill, where the surface will much more resemble something like AQU than it will SA, at 10F, in a race full of other GSWs and other speed horses capable of actually carrying their speed past 7.5F, he does not stand a chance. Horses can outrun pedigrees with as many factors as Goldencents had in his favor last Saturday, but not in a fair fight against so many other good horses.

I reviewed the charts from last Saturday at SA. Was speed good? Sure, but the results were extremely formful. Here's the dirt races from last Saturday:

race 2: speed runs 1-2 around track but those also were the two top betting choices
race 3: the 2-5 megachalk pressed pace, then took over to win easily
race 5: Beholder wins wire to wire, but she was 3-10 to win.
race 7: Jimmy Creed, at 6-5, sits 2nd off Comma to the Top (2-1). Comma to the Top tires to finish 4th.
race 9: Goldencents presses Super 99 and goes on to win.
race 10: The favorite had a clear lead but got passed late by the 2nd choice.

Speed certainly wasn't bad but considering how formful the results were, I'd be hesitant to conclude that it was an overpowering speed bias that carried Goldencents to a win. If there was a rail bias, he didn't benefit from it was he was chasing two wide.

[Tread]

Originally Posted by cj

It isn't like California horses have performed poorly at Churchill over the years.

This argument makes as much sense as and uses the same logic as, O'Neil won last year so he's a good bet this year.

[Valuist]

Originally Posted by Tread

This argument makes as much sense as and uses the same logic as, O'Neil won last year so he's a good bet this year.

The point I was making about O'Neill was not so much simply that he won last year, but he knows how to prepare a Derby winner. The race was dominated for years by Lukas, Baffert and Zito. O'Neill had the horse last year, and he didn't mess it up.

[cj]

Originally Posted by Tread

This argument makes as much sense as and uses the same logic as, O'Neil won last year so he's a good bet this year.

The California tracks are always fast, and many horses have come out of the Santa Anita Derby to at Churchill. I'm not talking about late runners either. What part doesn't makes sense to you?

If you don't like the horse, that is fine, but it won't be because of where he prepped. That is what makes no sense to me.

[Tread]

Originally Posted by cj

The California tracks are always fast, and many horses have come out of the Santa Anita Derby to at Churchill. I'm not talking about late runners either. What part doesn't makes sense to you?

If you don't like the horse, that is fine, but it won't be because of where he prepped. That is what makes no sense to me.

I'm not saying I don't like him because of where he prepped. I'm saying the public perception of the effort is over-inflated due to the speed bias of the track and the company of the race was extremely poor when factoring in Flashback's injury. Santa Anita is not always a drag strip like that, and in fact was not the prior time this group of horses raced.

That said, I just went backwards 8 years, and outside of last year I'm not finding a whole lot of California-based horses in the Derby results. Nothing very exciting happens until I hit Giacamo in 2005.

EDIT - The part that does not make sense is that prior year's results from a certain location or trainer mean nothing on the potential for this year. It's about the horses, period. When people like Chip Wooley and John Servis have winners the last decade, you can't tell me being a super-trainer is required or makes much difference.

[precocity]

Originally Posted by Tread

The best horse in the best race so far??? Why, because Beyer says so?



Who did he beat in this field? The winner of these peers last time wasn't even in the race, and the horse he beat for second was racing on what most likely was an extremely sore knee and is now out of training.

Goldencents had the dreamiest of trips here, sitting just off the pace of a severely distance limited "route" horse and having to do nothing more than hold off an injured contender afterwards, as the track was so ridiculously speed favoring all day that closers had no chance at all no matter what the fractions were.

Go check the chart, every winner of every dirt race was in the lead at the top of the stretch. This track had a SEVERE bias and horses coming from behind were out of contention when the gates opened. The fact that Super99 held on for third tells me all I need to know, this track had a ridiculous bias to it and played into the how "impressive" the victory appeared to simpletons.

Figure makers like Jerry Brown have already been heard on this topic, unequvicoally stating he is adding to the time of the SAD due to the glib surface and reducing the time of the Wood due to it (the surface) being slow and the horses coming home into a huge headwind (which, incidentally, still didnt stop them from running the last 3F almost 2 sec faster than the SAD horses did).

And this isn't even to mention his pedigree, which is absolutely NOTHING like I'llHaveAnother's and is loaded with sprinters and milers. BRIS shows an avg winning distance of both his sire and dam's sire to be less than 7F. Pretty sure no horse ever in the history of the Derby has won with AWD so low on both sides.

If you want to bet the horse simply because O'Neil won last year, go right ahead. A lot of people bet Motion's horse last year for the exact same reason, not looking deeper into the details, and that didn't work out very well for them.

goldencents was a 2yr old when he won that race and has won past 7f, he not my top pick but he is in my top 5. im telling you the horse has a ton of heart.

[cj]

Originally Posted by Tread

I'm not saying I don't like him because of where he prepped. I'm saying the public perception of the effort is over-inflated due to the speed bias of the track and the company of the race was extremely poor when factoring in Flashback's injury. Santa Anita is not always a drag strip like that, and in fact was not the prior time this group of horses raced.

That said, I just went backwards 8 years, and outside of last year I'm not finding a whole lot of California-based horses in the Derby results. Nothing very exciting happens until I hit Giacamo in 2005.

EDIT - The part that does not make sense is that prior year's results from a certain location or trainer mean nothing on the potential for this year. It's about the horses, period. When people like Chip Wooley and John Servis have winners the last decade, you can't tell me being a super-trainer is required or makes much difference.

Well, SoCal was synthetic for a large part of that, so wasn't really thinking about those years. Isn't Churchill almost always really fast on Derby day, barring bad weather? It is usually a lot closer to SA than it is to Aqu speed wise.

[Tread]

Difficult call because there has been so much rain there the past decade. On a normal, dry day, I believe the CD surface is sandier, looser, and deeper compared to SA. but being sandy, when it gets water in it it can tighten up in a hurry.

[Valuist]

Originally Posted by Tread

I'm not saying I don't like him because of where he prepped. I'm saying the public perception of the effort is over-inflated due to the speed bias of the track and the company of the race was extremely poor when factoring in Flashback's injury. Santa Anita is not always a drag strip like that, and in fact was not the prior time this group of horses raced.

That said, I just went backwards 8 years, and outside of last year I'm not finding a whole lot of California-based horses in the Derby results. Nothing very exciting happens until I hit Giacamo in 2005.

EDIT - The part that does not make sense is that prior year's results from a certain location or trainer mean nothing on the potential for this year. It's about the horses, period. When people like Chip Wooley and John Servis have winners the last decade, you can't tell me being a super-trainer is required or makes much difference.

You are making the assumption that Flashback was injured for the entire race. We don't know definitively when it happened, and its likely it wasn't until very late in the race. If he got up to win, IMO, there's no doubt Flashback would've been favored at CD, especially when one takes into account the uninspiring efforts in the eastern portion of the country.

Not saying this is true, but I always wonder when I see a hyped horse come down with an injury. Maybe its real. Maybe he didn't live up to the hype and they don't want to risk further disappointments. It wouldn't be the first time we've seen a 3 YO rushed off the track.

[cj]

Originally Posted by Tread

Difficult call because there has been so much rain there the past decade. On a normal, dry day, I believe the CD surface is sandier, looser, and deeper compared to SA. but being sandy, when it gets water in it it can tighten up in a hurry.

Then they must water it, because it is usually very fast.

[Tread]

Im not saying that at all, it would only need to have occurred in the stretch where he was really called upon for his best run to have an impact on his performance.

Conspiracy theory? Comon, you cant be serious about that.