mISS fatal.

If you think Brother Derek is a pig because of his "poor" showings in the TC races, you too are a short term thinker with no patience. Unless something is physically wrong with this horse, and if he keeps proper development, you WILL hear from this horse again. He will be givin a good rest, and barring injury, this horse will be a force. The tide will turn in the other direction and you will be eating your pork oinks. What goes around comes around. Now that the hyped up TC is over, we got horses coming in for big stakes races that avoided the rigor of all, or most of the TC races. And we got the horses that ran that will be rested waiting for later stakes and a BC chance that are very talented like BD. The storm looms.

As far as Lava Man goes, he has not looked too great outside Cali, but I still have a soft spot for these tough guys.

Is there ANY doubt that if you compared west coast horses going east and winning compared to the other way around (either 2006 or going back 1 year) that the westerners would hold at least a 2, or 3/1 advantage? And how is it that once a Cacique or Grey Swallow goes east and beats the eastern chump (English Channel), now they're adopted as eastern horses and Lava hasn't faced the likes of such.

Winning on both dirt and grass trumps the inside-outside California blemish. Are there two surfaces more different than dirt and grass? That is, would winning on dirt in both Calif and NY be more impressive than winning Gr I's on dirt and grass in Calif? Not IMO.

It's not like he's been scoring these wins while running slowly. He's tied for 2nd best Beyer of the year on dirt, behind only Sinister Minister's Keenland-aided 116. On grass, no horse has a better Beyer than Lava Man's 108 in the Whittingham.

I love the horse even though he's cost me money. I bet him in that NY race last year, and my BC future on Lava Man became instantly worthless at the same time.

If there were a Horse-Of-the-Half-Year award, it would have to be Lava Man. But lots of things can happen in the 2nd half of the year. I noticed, for example, that Flower Alley put in a very nice work yesterday or the day before.

--Dunbar

Dude! You are soooooo right. Plus some of my favorites are in the west. I love Impy too.