i tend to ignore most comments, if not all, from the rider. smith also said giacomo flipped his palate in either the preakness or the belmont. he felt he needed an excuse for why the horse didn't run well. it was also untrue that anything had gone wrong with the horse.

zenyatta would be the first female to win the classic should she somehow manage to cross the line first. it's my opinion that her running style will be more of a hindrance tomorrow than in her past races, and that the field she will be joining is far, far superior to anything she has raced to this point. should she win, she would be deserving of every bit of praise....but i'll be amazed if she pulls it off. i've enjoyed watching her run, but that doesn't mean i think she's some sort of super horse. and the 13 for 13 was certainly aided by her campaign and her competition. i have more respect for a horse such as summer bird, who travelled all over, and took on all comers-even with a loss or two, than i do for a horse that's been treated as a hot house flower with huge spacing between races. i give them credit for taking her into a new realm, i didn't think it would happen.

I will play against Zenyatta for these reasons:

She is an underlay at 5/2
She has never run a race @ 1 1/4 mile
It's a big field and her favorite go way wide and pick them off at the end will be much more difficult.
There is not a ton of pace in the race, hurting a deep closers chances.

That being said, I don't have a great opinion on who will win, I just think there are too many things going against Zenyatta.

agree on all counts.

How do you feel about her now?

Nice post DrugS. So what did you learn?

Life Is Sweet had won 3 straight G1/G2 races on the Pro-Ride and then in her next four she was 7 lengths in third to Rail Trip in the Hollywood Gold Cup and finished 2.25, 4.25, and 1.75 lengths behind Zenyatta. I think the Santa Anita Pro-Ride, the extra sixteenth, and crazy pace set by Careless Jewel helped Life Is Sweet.

The pace was not really set by careless jewel, it was set by lethal heat, that horse running off did nothing to the pace of the rest of the horses that actually ran.

Careless Jewel served as a pretty nice rabbit for the rest of the field. I can't imagine Life is Sweet winning without her - and I had the 2.

BTW, does anybody have the will-pays to the Classic-Classic double?

really, who wins then? she caught them with an eighth left.

And she loped along eleventy billion lengths back whilst the rest of the field chased a rabbit. It seems pretty clear cut to me.

Now, who's going to be Zenyatta's rabbit tomorrow? That's almost exactly how Zenyatta would have won that race today.

chased, the horse ran off, they were not chasing they let her go...cmon:zz:

Seems like half the Euro races out there employ similar tactics, but with intent in most instances. That was a Euro-like race for all intents and purposes.

i dont think it matters that much when they run off either in those races...

it matters what happened to holy bull in the travers, that was a real rabbit...of course he still won

I got the impression that the rider on Proviso jumped the gun, perhaps thinking Careless Jewel was just coasting when well in front, and moved his mount very early into the fast fractions. Both Lethal Heat and Cocoa Beach followed in turn. All 3 were under a drive with still over 3f left to run.

This is the same guy who declared on a pre-race handicapping show that there was no way in hell that Bayakoa could run fast on the lead (at old Gulfstream) and still beat the Eastern closers like Gorgeous. FYI

Gorgeous was a CA horse. FYI.

Maybe not quite as much about Zenyatta as some may think .. but we did learn something about her chances tomorrow.

I posted the following a week or so ago ...


I'm not so sure Zenyatta is as much of a slave to pace as Life Is Sweet is ... however, after watching the Distaff, it should be crystal clear that Zenyatta is way better than the two extremely mediocre looking races on paper that she has run in her last two starts.

However, just because Life Is Sweet got a gift from heaven race shape in the Distaff ... doesn't mean Zenyatta will get the same in the Classic .. in fact, unless Regal Ransom and Quality Road do something really stupid .. she might be subjected to another slow pace... though probably not as slow of a pace as the one that made Life Is Sweet lose soundly to Lethal Heat twice.. and get drubbed by Cocoa Beach over the same track a few weeks ago.

Had Lethal Heat finished 2nd today ... I think that would have been a really great win for Zenyatta's chances tomorrow. That certainly didn't happen. Yet it's hardly any knock to Zenyatta's chances tomorrow either ... LH could just be long in the tooth from a tough Barry Abrams campaigin.

All in all ... I think we learned for certain..

* That Life Is Sweet is a VERY dangerous horse when she gets a strong pace. She's a very mediocre one when she gets no pace.

* We learned for 100% certain that Zenyatta is better than her last two races.

What we don't know is what kind of pace Zenyatta gets tomorrow ... surely nothing like the one Careless Jewel helped setup for LIS today.

I'm still going to try and beat Zenyatta tomorrow ... but I won't be all fired up to bet against her.

Now if you guys will excuse me for the rest of the night ... I have to go out and try and make an even bigger fool of myself in Vegas tonight than I normally do posting here.

If you have to go back 20 years to illustrate that the guy could be wrong tomorrow, it's not saying much!

--Dunbar

Zenyatta is now likely to be more horribly overbet than even before. So I learned that you must try to beat her or sit out the race. I actually sat out the Ladies Classic today, which preserved my gigantic $3 profit (thanks, She Be Wild). (Actually I had a casino Twin Q alive into the 9th race--it started with the 5th--but could only get one of my horses in the final half).

Damn BC also distracted me from betting the Ack Ack at CD--my 10-1 choice won, naturally.

I can buy that, but that was on the turn when most horses are going to make a move in that race. The pace was fair IMO.