Different scenario, wouldn't you agree? I would wager to say that the majority of posters on here most likely had Barbaro on their tickets with a realistic chance at winning the derby. I couldn't say the same with Giacomo. The 2005 and 2006 derbies were as different as night and day.

Both Barbaro and Giacomo got the absolute circumstances they needed in the race.

I bet on the latter and not the former.

Perhaps Smokey Stover will ship in for the race....

The owner has been bugging the trainer to "stretch him out" --- so the Carter and Met Mile may be possible for him. Those connections aren't affraid to ship East.

Mad props to you, then... I tossed Giacomo first thing and didn't even use him. I just couldn't see him winning... too slow.

Upset beat man o war three times?????

Once maybe luck, heck even twice, but all three times! In the Classic they even had the same running style and were at similar positions at calls throughout the race, he just got outrun when the real running started.

I know, Easy Goer was a much better horse then sunday silence, head to head races in the derby, preakness and breeders cup are throwouts.

Sun King absolutely did NOT have the same running style as Giacomo in two of their three meetings.

I still believe that Easy Goer was the better of the two, but unsound and that was the difference.

i don't. easy goer was better in new york. and this is coming from an easy goer fan! sunday silence earned my respect, and no way i could say i feel that easy goer was the better horse. he was talented as hell, but sunday silence was amazing.

Well, if anything, Sunday Silence was definitely better in the breeding shed, but on the track, I'd take Easy Goer. Wasn't there some controversy regarding Sunday Silence?

Easy Goer made 11 starts at age 3....and won 6 Grade 1 races.

I don't think soundness issues had anything to do with SS beating him.

He was a super horse, who wasn't quite able to crack the tactically gifted (and also great) Sunday Silence. I also believe EG was the more impressive of the two horses, it just wasn't apperant when they met up.

You what's nice about Sun King? EVERY time you bring him up on any board it gets an extensive argument, usually involving DrugS, which is a lot more than can be said for most horses.

He's a pretty good horse....and he's still racing.

In all fairness, the Derby was a muddy track and the Preakness was a Pat Day horror show of the highest order.

And he tried to duck into the gap..and ran in spots in the Classic.

He didn't look like an easy horse to ride....and certainly wasn't fond of the off-tracks at CD.

oh sure, blame the little guy..........

after all...he was "New York's...EASY GOER...in front!"

10 pnt, put Cordero or anyone else on him...and he would have been "horse of the year" in '89.

That was his best race by far...after that victory, Zito should have kept him sprinting.
Loved him in last year's Met Mile, just missing. I always thought SK was at a disadvantage going more than a mile & an sixteenth.
I know isn't many grade I races sprinting during the summer, but if Zito wants his grade I with SK...
a mile or less is the only way he's gonna get it.

Well, he had Commentator for the Forego and even though it obviously didn't work out he was even money and Sun King was still 2-1 30 minutes later in another Grade 1.

yea, and sunday silence had some crack head on his back, how good might he have been with a clean rider!

This is an unfortunate " I'm desperate for attention " post.

you know me soooo well.

I kinda blame the jockey on several of those races, he broke horribly in the Met Mile with Bejarano who has a reputation of doing that. He's just had bad luck. Great horse and I'm glad there are still Tracy Farmer's out there to keep the great horses running.

great horse? what makes him great?

you know who was a great horse, saint liam. to make it through dutrow's program for 2 straight years is one heck of an achievement, unparalled really.

You know, he may not be the fastest horse in the world, but he sure gives you everything he has and that's what makes him a great race horse. Gets that from his dad.

Sun King is not great by any means, but he is a neat little guy and very competitive on his day. Also he is 5 now which makes him an abnormality to be still racing in the first place.

i'd say sun king is pretty close to great... he took it to invasor in the whitney just got beat all the excuses about invasors trip that day is kinda lame, i was there he had a fine trip, and sun king still almost got him. sun kings only problem is he always throws in a clunker, any race he can run huge or finish last, and at this point with him being 5 it might be too late for zito to fix.

also he lost to invasor, who is yet to lose in the country and who looks to be unbeatable and who is now a champion, and he lost to silver train who loves belmont and is also another champion, you cant take anything away from the way sun king ran in those 2 races

He is one of the best race horses in America when you throw them all in a bucket...but a long, long, long way from being great. He has 3 less grade 1s than Funny Cide after all.

i just watched the replay of the whitney 4 times, and i dont see how in anyway invasor got a bad trip.. early on he is off the pace on the rail, jara moves him up sensing he needs to not let jv and flower alley get first jump, he then puts that rival away and holds off sun king, never at any point in the race did he have any trouble or was he more then 3 wide. very good trip in my opinion

Another with subpar trip handicapping skills.....

While perhaps there is something admirable about your enthusiasm, believe it or not, you aren't an expert, and these posts of yours make this more and more apparent. If you would spend less time belaboring your mediocre points, and more time thinking about what the knowledgable posters here have said, you might actually learn something.

Because you do not understand trips and trip handicapping, and thus don't understand why Invasor had a trip that compromised him from running his best race, does not mean he had a good trip. One thing is for sure....Invasor had less than an ideal trip and in fact a tougher one than he had in the Donn.

You're entitled to your opinions but that doesn't elevate them above those around here that have earned credibility.

Carry Back?

BTW, I actually wanted to ask you something on this topic. We've discussed trip handicapping before, in relation to the Breeders' Futurity and though we might not have completely agreed, I very clearly understood your point and respect it tremendously. Anyway, don't you think trip handicapping is in a way the most subjective type of handicapping in horse racing? I mean figures can't really be disputed, but you being a more intellectual person are able to infer much more from a race than say others. I mean, I've been around horse racing a long time, but you are definitely going to be able to identify things from a race that I won't.

I think, and you kind of allude to this a bit, that most people see trip handicapping as identifying trouble that a horse was in and betting him next time out. That's not nearly all of it though. There are countless others. One that I like is when a speed horse breaks slowly, gets absolutely gunned from there, then tires. He/she often proves to be a good bet next time out with a more consistent trip.

So, I guess I was asking a question there, I'm just interested in your opinion a bit more, as I'm always interested in honing what minute handicapping skills I may have. Thanks in advance.

NT

It's a great question and I think you are right about a lot of what you say. It is subjective but also supremely logical. The biggest problem people that don't understand have was correctly pointed out by you...they see trouble and then look to bet that horse the next time it runs. That is yet another recipe for losing.

To me, what people need to do is sort of take the whole trip apart and then put it back together and view it as a whole. The most basic mistake people make involves a horse who is getting a perfect trip, maybe saving ground behind the pace, and he/she has to steady or wait in traffic for room, and then perhaps gets free too late and ends up losing a relatively close race. The initial reaction of " if that horse had gotten out it would have won " may well be true, but it would have won with a perfect trip, and the sound horseplayer would downgrade that performance the next time the horse runs. Instead, they mistakenly upgrade it. Or perhaps I should say substantially upgrade it.

The example you gave may be a good one, though it would depend on the horse and where it was racing and is racing next, but certainly you have pointed out the essense of effective trip handicapping, which is finding horses who's performances were compromised by events during the running of the race. Most of this is often very subtle, often more subtle than the tough trip Invasor had that DrugS correctly pointed out, as it can be about understanding the dynamics of a race and how that helped or hindered the competitors.

Sometimes trips can be as simple as trouble or being wide, assuming the horse still performed well or was severly compromised by a bias, and assuming that trouble did in fact severly hamper them, hopefully in a way that isn't obvious. Because, identifying trouble is fine, but only useful if you can also find a way to use it to make money in the future.

ok i guess i understand what your saying black... but i have seen alot of races, and i just dont think he got that bad of a trip, why is that a bad thing for me to think that ? i was there live that day and have watched the race 10 times, maybe you can explain to me why the trip was so bad, and help me understand.

It's been explained in this thread.

He made an extremely premature move into a very contentious pace. This is not only hard to sustain but also against his style of running. He simply ran harder, for longer, and faster, than everybody else in the race. Sun King, who may be my personal favorite horse of all time, was the major beneficiary of this set up, and yet still couldn't beat him.

As an example, I bet Premium Tap when he won the Woodford for the simple reason that he too raced close to that pace in the Whitney, and still managed to finish at least reasonably close ( and he lost by 7 1/2 lengths ). If I thought he ran well you can only imagine how well I must think Invasor ran.

And, by the way, you can call me Andy. Blackthroatedwind is a song.

Which is, for continued simplification's sake, to say that this race needs to be not viewed as just a race in itself. It needs to be compared to the other races that Invasor has been in. With that in mind, and looking at all of the other races he runs, this was an anomaly, and one that certainly could or should have cost him the race. But it still didn't. He had every reason to lose after rushing up to Flower Alley against his running style (which at the time, seemed like a wise move because most thought FA would be similar to how he was the year before), yet still won.

ok andy ... well i guess i have alot of learning to do then, because the race i saw was..... early on he was well off the pace and then moved up while i guess i can agree he might have ran harder, for a horse of his caliber, was that trip really considered bad ? i think he got alot worst trip in the donn, he checked badly and was all bottled up in the stretch.

donn was visual trouble. you could see it.

whitney was trouble based on his running style. he ran a race that he doesn't run, and still outlasted a horse who had the tables entirely set up for him.