I don't use figs when I bet so what they run is of little concern to me. The only reason I brought them up is because PG mentioned them.

I hate Smiling Tiger and bet Euroears that day, but hell before that next start he was a total stud. I think Byk had him as Eclipse sprinter. TC was a bit wide in the Malibu also.

I'm bewildered as to Giant Oak suffering by general comparison in the analysis going on here. I'm going to assume that is a function of our complete unfamiliarity with horses staying around until they fully mature these days. There was a time when a horse that reached his peak at 5 or 6 was appreciated simply as a late developer and gleefully welcomed to the handicap ranks.

For those who have never seen one race much past their sophomore year, a horse doesn't reach physical maturity until age 4. It's odd that a horse would run a career best figure in his first start at age 5, (105 Beyer in Giant Oak's case), and be dismissed as fodder in a discussion trying to underwhelm Morning Line's foes.

I don't get it. Everyone bemoans horses taken to the shed too quickly, and yet when one stays around, Beyering 100+ in his last three races run between 9f-10f in traditionally serious Handicap Division races, he's scoffed at as an example of how bad the elder males are currently.

They are all bad Freddy. That is the point. You guys are getting excited because a horse had a dream trip and crushed Tweebster and Make Music For me.

I didnt realize you dont use figs. If Twirling Candy had run wire to wire and ran a huge fig it would not have mattered to me. In fact it is sort of more interesting that was able to sit off the pace and then kick clear. I realize he was hardly beating Formal Gold and Skip Away.

Of course you bet Euroears....your redboard aside, Smiling Tiger was a total stud before that?

:wf:wf

My point was they are all bad, but at least TC is winning races.

A dream trip for that horse is unpressed on a loose lead not galloping a half under restraint. This is the flaw I think many make. If that horse wanted too he could have run a bigger race by simply burying bad horses and running off.

Im sure me beting a first time GOAT is a lie.
Good way to deflect from the actual point though. Smiling Tiger won how many G1's last year? Where did he finish in the BC sprint?

It's probably because his last non DQ win before Saturday was in May of 2009, on the grass.

He is consistantly fast Freddy, though not blindingly so. He stays a route of ground at a high and level cruising speed. I'm not sure why you would require a Tiznow out of an A.P. Indy mare to be excruciatingly fast, but the BC Mile and the SAR Allowance win were both negative numbers for him on Thoro-Graph coming in, and Saturday's race will fall close to a -1 as well. (That would be a top for him.)

He might be getting good now, maybe he will be really good. Up to Saturday what had he done to make him any type of a player in this division? At the begining of last year he was just bad. He started the year running 3rd,5th,3rd,6th,4th and 5th in his first 6 races. Then maybe he got a little better, but he hangs badly twice, both times under 2-1 in the betting. Im not sure what about this horse made him any good coming into Saturday. Maybe now we can say he is OK because he won the Donn.
Not to mention his last win was about 2 years ago on grass.

I'm sure it is too. Glad we are in agreement.

He finished 3rd in the Sprint (behind Hamazing Destiny) and beat the mighty Supreme Summit and EZ's Gentlemen in his grade 1 wins last year. What a stud. Just because a race is a grade 1, doesn't mean it has any quality in it.

These are all very basic concepts.

Nice generalization horses get better with age? Giant Oaks a bum and needs the 4 horses on the lead to ding dong to suck on by. I am surprised at you Giant Oak? Tell me how many Pletcherized 3 year olds have come off the Derby trail to be Handicap animals? Should we expect I Want Revenge to season with age? What do you make of the 38 sec last 3f's?

A dream trip for every horse is unpressed galloping on a loose lead.

Love his guts and gameness how couldnt you. He is gorgeous colt and looks the part. Where is his fast race loosing to Datoka Phone at 30/1 or staying 9f's in front of a couple of cripples?

You must spend enough time on here to know that all horses are slow and nobody is any good at all. Even the ridiculously fast horses from the last ten years are often mocked for only beating that crops bad horses. There is no positivity whatsoever. Damn shame too, this is one fun sport.

Solid contribution. Thanks.

Yep hated Zenyatta, QR, Rachel, goldikova, Zarkava. Uncle Mo etc etc. Go away this isn't for you. Hoss, Byk, Rollo etc. can handle it from here

Twirling Candy
 

We were fortunate to get on the backstretch of Del Mar last August and were standing outside the Sadler barn when John came up to me and introduced himself. Told him that Hammerle had given our group passes and John pointed out the horses walking around the barnyard and then said do you want to see what a real racehorse looks like. He took us to the stall of Twirling Candy and said that he was the best horse that he had ever been around and compared him to having the physical quality of a Dwight Howard in the NBA. John then stated the only issue is a mental one with him and if TC could ever figure things out then the sky would be the limit....

It was a real treat for us and i will always remember John for his kindness and the time he spent in showing us around his barn.

Looks like TC is finally figuring things out on the mental side and i agree although he was visually very impressive this weekend it was against a field of less than stellar competitors.

I have a good feeling that John will ship TC outside of California during the Summer and Fall and hope that he does. It will be interesting to see how he fares against the older handicapping division back east.

You would not have to look far to find hating for each of the aforementioned except maybe Zarkava.

It's not hating. Only on message boards is discussing things considered hating.

:D

You're doing the generalizing by infering that I suggested every horse will 'get better with age'. I said 'horses reach maturity at age 4'. That's just a fact. And you're answering you're own retort or question in regards to Pletcherized 3yo's... Different owners and barns have different goals. Horses that are wrung out early are not going to 'get better with age'. They're going to disappear. But a horse like Giant Oak that has been well managed and allowed to fully develop can be in position to capitalize at the point when he's at his best. He just ran his BEST race in career start #24, but he's a bum. Why? Because it took until fall of his 4yo year for him to get close to being a complete racehorse?

As to the pace, Giant Oak went his final 3f in sub :37.0 (:36.3). Are Block and Bridgmo supposed to apologize because there was a serious pace in the race? It was the Donn Handicap. It's the kind of race that is supposed to have an honest pace. Everybody runs their race and the dust settles where it settles. Fly Down and Ron the Greek got that same pace set up and couldn't get closer to the three collapsing leaders than 4.5 and 8.5 lengths respectively. Giant Oak ran a very nice race against a very nice group. Instead of being judged on earlier career shortcomings, he deserves to be judged on what appears to be the current, more complete version, of what he is as a racehorse.

19 straight losses until the Clark including Illnois bred stakes. I am not a believer

Hah! Who's flip flopping now?

This morning he was rating kindly from all the "learning" he'd done by skipping the BC Classic after having his tail shoved between his legs in the Goodwood by the West Coast version of Giant Oak...Richard's Kid.

Up to this point Richards Kid and Giant Oak are pretty similar, but I would say as of now Richards Kid is still better. The Goodwood has nothing to do with TC ability. Going long on dirt, is different from going long on crap.

My point is that Twirling Candy best race currently would be loose on a n uncontested lead that doesnt suggest he cant rate or wont we already watched him rate didnt we?

He rates fine. Im not even sure why thats an issue.

I was just teasing Freddy with that. Besides, he still has yet to come up with an answer as to why Morning Line getting tagged by Dakota Phone in the BC Mile after BC Sprint-like fractions is worse than Twirling Candy getting outright passed by Dakota Phone after merely solid fractions.

I think we all agree Dakota Phone is no Richard's Kid...or Giant Oak.

Yeah, I was waiting for this.

He handles all 3 surfaces, but each only over certain distances.

I guess that downhill slide from a 108 Beyer at 7f down to 101 at 9f over the same surface doesn't suggest anything about his ability to go long.

The only time Twirling Candy rated around two turns was in the Oceanside, where Macias led, open-mouthed until midstretch. One race later, Macias nearly killed himself running off in the La Jolla to the benefit of Sidney's Candy's inflated reputation.

Otherwise, Twirling Candy has "pulled", which is hardly rating fine. That style won't be ideal for a race with multiple pace rivals, eg. the most recent BC Classic...or this year's Donn.

Pulling because your cruise speed is super high is different then pulling to exhaust yourself.

I hate to agree with you, but I could not agree more. Plus he settled down Saturday and was never really asked for much. There is more to this horse.

What the fucl< are you talking about?

Pulling means he's fighting the jock's restraint, period. His running style is a couple of degrees away from being deemed "rank". It will be a weakness if and when he faces other class opponents. Therefore, he will be quite vulnerable to a heavy pace scenario in a route if he actually ever lines up in a race of that potential.

Go watch the race a few times zoom in on TC. He is hardly a hand full and way more settled then is previous races. You are going to have to drop the preconceived BS and really watch the colt is just fast

More love for TC....This was inevitable after the first blog post.


http://www.drf.com/news/watchmaker-w...sional-ratings

You gotta be kidding me. Rosario has a hammer lock with the colt's head cocked to the right around the clubhouse turn and then checks him a couple of times along the backstretch (feet practically in the dashboard the whole way). The only reason a duel didn't develop was because Indian Firewater, open mouthed, accelerated after the opening quarter while Rosario was busy gathering up Twirling Candy. Inexplicably, the geniuses on the other horses decided the first two were going to slow and all moved early in unison into the teeth of a 1:09+ 6f fraction, essentially guaranteeing that Twirling Candy would have no late rival to deal with once Indian Firewater had had enough.

I don't have par times and charts and all that other stuff for SA's new dirt track ... but I actually thought the Strub pace was pretty darn slow considering the speed of the racing surface.

Twirling Candy only ran a 101 - I have no opinion if I agree with that number or not - but, if the pace was slow .. I think he deserves props for getting as much late seperation on that field of horrid bums as he did.

But yeah, a lot of people are going way overboard with that win...and he's still suspect going forward for some of the reasons Rollo has made throughout this thread.

The opened mouth Indian Firewater was running significantly slower then Morning line and stem cell Eddie and while we can view Twirling Candy's behavior differently you have to conceed that if twirling Candy was in the Donn he would have been able to run a lot faster early in the race and still not be nearly as restrained. I think the fact that he was able to rate into pace figs that a well respected pace fig maker has repped at 20 pts slower then the Donn speaks volumes to my argument that TC could have been 3 or 4 lengths off the hot Donn pace and been in terriffic striking postion. in essence debunking your theory he would have been cooked by ML and friends.
While TC was toiling on a 90ish pace in the Strub and able to restrain from cooking himself on the lead lets assume he was given a bit more run in the Donn and was allowed to run a 100 pace while ML and Eddie cooked on a 110ish pace.. Your only theory could now be running a 100 early vs. a restrained 90 would have twarted his last 3/8ths. I guess its possible but I actually see him winning the race(Donn) with considerable ease.

I'm not qualified to comment on the pace figures, however the 3/4 split was nearly 4 seconds faster than that of the San Antonio (a Grade 2 for 4yo and up) a day later at the same track and distance. Nevertheless, my comment was in response to yours saying that visually Twirling Candy settled nicely in the Strub. That simply wasn't the case.

Now, your new theory that because TC wasn't on the lead (despite "pulling") in the slower paced Strub, he would be able to settle off a faster pace as in the Donn I suppose is possible. Again, I wouldn't necessarily describe it as "settled" but he was pretty much outrun early in the Malibu, which would lend some support to your idea.

However, it should be recognized the Malibu was a sprint, at least a 1/4 mile shorter than the major handicaps later this year. Also that early pace was set by outright sprinters (Smiling Tiger and Alcindor), not by speedy route types. I might also even say that Twirling Candy should have been even further back in that race (he was only 3 lengths off Smiling Tiger) if indeed he could settle as you suggest. Lastly, though he was able to cope with being positioned off the early lead, the Malibu was certainly Twirling Candy's most hard fought victory, all out to get up just at the wire. Certainly that finish in no way suggests that he would want 2 more furlongs to deal with at anything close to that pace.