I think your numbers are way off. At the 2 year old sales, if you only buy horses with good comformation, that pass the vet, appear very sound, and have a good way of moving, the chances of the horse making it to the races is probably about 95%. If they were one of the best horses at the sale, the chances of them winning a race are probably about 75% and the chances of them being a stakes horse are probably about 25%. When you see a horse like What a Song working a quarter of a mile in :20 3/5 at a sale, there is an excellent chance that he will be a stakes horse. If a horse works that fast and has a good way of moving, there's at least a 25% chance that the horse will be a stakes horse. That's why the horse went for $1.8 million, even with a mediocre pedigree.

Yearling sales are a totally different story. The chances of picking out a good horse are much smaller there. At a yerling sale, if you pick out the best looking horse with the best breeding, there still is probably only about a 5-10% chance of getting a stakes horse.

With all these percenatges that I'm throwing out here, I'm making the assumption that the person picking the horses is extremely good at it. If you don't have a good eye, your percenatges would be much lower.

Take a guy like Bob Baffert. He has a very good eye. When he buys a horse for $1 million at a 2 year olds in training sale, you can bet that the horse will be a very good horse. At the Barrett's sale last year, he bought two expensive horses. He paid $1.8 million for What a Song and around $800,000 for Point Determined. Both horses turned out to be stakes horses. This year at Barretts, he only bought one expensive horse. He bought an Exploit colt for $1.2 million. I can't think of the horse's name but that horse is 2 for 2 and is a stakes winner.

Anyway, the point is that if you know what you are doing and are willing to pay top dollar at the 2 year old sales, you will get very good horses. At the yearling sales, it is much more difficult because you have far less to go on.

I don't think so. If the horse was unraced, he would be lucky to get $5,000. I doubt he could even get that much.

With The green Monkey, they'd be lucky to get $1,000-$2,000.

Is E Z Warrior the colt you are thinking of?

I agree completely, Dees; ArlJim's is the funniest post I've read this year! (Aside to Travis Stone--it was a JOKE!)

--Dunbar

Yes. That is the horse.

It's obvious the GM is a fast horse because of that one work. If he can be sound there is no reason to think he can't compete as a 3 yr. old.

Irony and sarcasm are especially hard to convey with the typed word. Have seen people reply indignantly to totally tongue-in-cheek letters to the editor in the local paper. Missed the point entirely. Reason I put <grin> behind some of my posts. I thought your post was amusing and so right on.

Ann, i agree on your point about irony and sarcasm being hard to detect. I have found out the hard way several times. I usually use the grins if I think there might be a chance that someone could take it the wrong way and get offended. Sometimes though, its fun to just be as sober and dry as possible and see how its received. Sadly, these are the things that amuse me.

sounds like my kind of guy.

Now that sounds tongue-in-cheek.

nope. i enjoy dry humor and sarcasm!

In fairness, I should admit that I read "best interest of the horse" as if you were serious. But the "doesn't have anything else to prove" smacked so clearly of Bernardini that I was already laughing by time I got to the excellent last line.

Keep 'em coming!

--Dunbar

I think it was pretty obvious that you were being sarcastic. I was laughing about it. How could a horse that's never run before, have already proved himself? LOL. That was a good one.

Well it seems that it was a successful post then, because while it apparently brought laughs to those that got the sarcasm, i'm guessing that there were also some that thought "This guy is nuts, saying the TGM has nothing to prove and that he's one of the best we've seen".

My other ideas were too over the top and no one would have bit on them. One was to make a post comparing TGM to a great horse like Seattle Slew.
The other idea was to try to make the case that he should be considered the leading contender for 2007 HOY.

certainly one could make a case for him to be champ. Juv. of 2006...after all he worked really fast @ the sale...and his picture graced the cover of MANY MANY publications both when he was sold...again when he was sent to a trainer...then again when he worked...he has been a media darling from day one and is clearly heads above the rest of the 2YO crop.

Oh I thought that was already a done deal so I didn't even think it had to be mentioned. He stands head and shoulders above this crop for sure.

Funny, I typed out exactly that Seattle Slew comparison as a response to your first post, but thought, nah, it wasn't nearly as funny as what you'd already written.

--Dunbar

A little inside info for those that enjoy that kind of thing.

Tentative plans call for him to be on the cover of Time Magazine ala Secretariat in early 2007.

They're undecided on which caption to use. It's between "How a racehorse made a nation feel good about themselves again" and "You can't put a pricetag on what this horse means to society."

Keep the sarcasm coming Jim. I got a great chuckle out of it!!!

That's good Mike, real good. i got a good laugh on that.