Excellent posting, CL. And your bringing up your Derby un-call on Orb was pretty darn humble and classy, too.

--Dunbar

My hubby played two hundred dollars to win on Oxbow and had a five dollar trifecta! Woohoooo!! We dined like royalty tonight thanks to to Coach Darryl Wayne Lukas!!

What a day!!!!

Never ever count out the old veterans of the racing wars, Lukas will be winning important races until the day he calls it quits.

Well done!

:tro:

Was anyone expecting the tri payout to be larger? Not that $1030 is great, but just thought it would be bigger, especially with oxbow being second highest odds. I can only assume lots of people had him in their tri box.

I did. 9 horse field didn't help, plus I don't think Orb was getting bet hard in the win pool. I could look up the pool data to see for sure, will do that tomorrow.

If I remember correctly, the yr looking at looking at lucky won it was higher and I think it had the same number of horses. It didn't have a 3/5 ml fav but I think that would be an advantage. Just thought that was a yr comparable, just seemed a little strange to me.

12 horse field versus a 9 horse field. With 12 horses there's 1320 possible trifecta combinations and with 9 horses there's only 504 combinations. I also thought it was light but that's probably the main reason.

The pick 4 also was a bit light. It actually came in UNDER the parlay, which almost never happens with sufficient pool size (and I'd call $2.1 million sufficient!) The only thing I can come up with is Skyring played closer to the 12-1 ML than the 24-1 post time odds. Then everything falls into place much better.

Didn't look back at the number of horses but makes sense.

Excellent work, Doug. Hope you won a lot of jingle on the race.

Great job Doug.. When the 1:13.1 went up, I thought to myself 'they're never going to get to him now'.

we were listening on the radio while heading for dinner...first and second fractions called out, i just said 'that's that'. good job by stevens and oxbow. disappointed, but not surprised.

The Dixie and Preakness are great examples of how much more fun racing would be if riders were as competitive as they were in eras that are clearly gone.

Stevens is back with a refreshing, "old school" approach that will enable him to capitalize when the early lead in a route race is uncontested. He has wired four Grade I or Grade II stakes races since February using these tactics.

The fact that Goldencents was rated off a pace like that of the Preakness is absolute lunacy. I'm not saying this as sour grapes for Orb or any other horse losing, it just speaks to the stupidity that occurs when jockeys do not ride competitive races. It's no longer just a problem in racing at all levels, it's an epidemic.

I'm thrilled for Gary Stevens and D. Wayne Lukas. DrugS, as always, did a phenomenal job highlighting reasons why Oxbow was a good bet in this race. Congrats to those who cashed.

Some brilliant work here guys. Without the Oxbow pace analysis after the Derby, I would likely have missed Oxbow and been sitting there with the 2-3-4 horses cold and nothing to show for it. Thanks for the insight and education.

Amazing its been since 1982 that a horse has went wire to wire in the Preakness!

Louis Quatorze wired in 1996.

It speaks to the quality of the American jockey colony that the Derby can have such a supersonic pace that fries anything close to it and two weeks later a horse can totally walk on the lead to win the Preakness. Obviously the difference in field size is a factor, but 90% of them have no idea what they're doing from a pace standpoint.

You are correct. I guess I should stop listening to what NBC says on their shows.

Calzone...please free up some space on your message box.

Some rough math this AM indicates that Orb was more like 9-5 (probably one or two clicks lower) in the exotics, but definitely not 3-5 like he was in the win pool.

As for the jockeys... this is a serious problem in American racing. It's getting worse by the minute. At LAD where, granted, we don't have a bunch of future Hall of Famers, we had a rider yank a horse off the pace that was ultimately posted over 25 seconds for the quarter despite a good rail/speed bias.

Gary Stevens saw an opportunity yesterday and that was it. There's a reason why he won so many races, and he's still winning them now upon his return.

Do you (or does anyone else) have the exacta will-pays with Orb in first position?

--Dunbar