Anybody at ARL today hear any news regarding Noble Hero in the Forward Pass??
I guess the poor guy couldnt carry my weight and all the P3s and DD I had tied up to him.

If he was the horse that Jimmy Graham was on that broke down, it's not good unfortunately...very ugly

The irishman is still alive, took him to downtown AH on Friday night, and then drank free beers saturday at Arlington from 11am to final post...He would disappoint Ireland as at one time, he was backed up 5 beers......

Also keep in mind that all week he was telling me that Winchester had no chance, and then the SOB had money WPS on the f'n horse.

Took him to Gators last night with friends and a couple of lady friends that were 'savage' in his words and partied all night....He fell in love with broccoli bites, and then took him to breakfast joint, where lady friends work at, and got him a broccoli omelette, and started drinking again today at Sox game

Been a grand time

Scav's doing his best to KO him... but he's still killing it at the windows. Gave us all super info on the Euro's, I nearly made a huge score on the Bev D with his insistence to include the 50-1 shot in the super, tossed DOA (in retrospect, no reason to exclude from 4th) and she beat P Kitten by a nose or I have that super which paid $7,600.

Anyways, Chicago rocked, had an AWESOME time, special props to the always-generous superman GBBob who welcomed us into his home and was a most generous host! Good to see all the Chitown crew out...

tough day today, in the sun drinking at 2 baseball games, just back and am wrecked.. its been a class weekend so far, just would have been beter if archi had rolled in the million.. De Kock seems to have blown the lid at Murtagh for holding Archi in..

I'm not saying Archipenko had a bad trip, and perhaps he was abit unlucky. But I thought he got out in time if he was head and shoulders the best horse in the field to get up. Yes Spirit One got a great trip and that is part of racing making your luck. He made his own luck and he was running down the lane, any other horse I think Archipenko would have nailed at the wire. I get the sense from reading here all Spirit One did was inherit a favorable situation and just got lucky, I think the horse deserves abit more credit than that.

I made a score because of Spirit One, but I'd agree that Archipenko was best. Never underestimate an easy lead like that going long on the turf.

he got out with like 100 yards to go, maybe, and having to make up 2 lengths off a horse that just did soft fractions.

If Murtagh doesn't ride to keep him pinned, Penko is out and clear by the 1/4 pole and it is alot closer, and probably blows by this horse.

Honestly, Murtagh was out of horse on the the final turn and purposely rode to keep Penko pinned. I don't blame him one bit, that is race riding. Shea had EVERY opportunity on the backside to get Penko in clear running in the 2 path but chose to keep him on the rail...

You get a quality horse on the lead on a 48 half and you are going to have trouble running that horse down. Which mind you I wouldn't say is a crawling pace either where a horse steals a race, this is not a scenario where cheap speed wins a race. BTW De Kock did say Archipenko could win on the lead if he inherited it or come off the pace, in essence I am saying given the way the race was run, I disagree that Archipenko was clearly the best horse, as the Murtagh thing is totally out of proportion IMO. He got boxed in for part of the stretch, hey that's horseracing, Murtagh did his job trying to secure the best way to win the race for his horse. It sounds like sour grapes to me from De Kock.

I didn't see anything wrong with the ride by Murtagh. He probably thought like everyone else that the winner would be coming back to them so he rode the race to keep the one horse he was worried about in a disadvantageous position. I thought he did exactly how he was supposed to do.

BTW I am not saying Spirit One is a better horse than Archipenko. In all honesty I think Archi is, but in this one isolated case he was not clearly the better horse.

De Kock's comments were nothing when compared to Shea's:

“He should've won, no doubt about it,” Shea suggested.

“Johnny hindered me the whole way round and twice pushed me into the fence"


It was a tough beat for connections but they'll slowly get over it..

Like Scav said, he got clear too late. Had he found a seam at the eighth pole and not run Spirit One down, I'd agree with you, but you can't alter course with 100 yards to go and not lose significant ground. I'm not going to say he was easily best, but I think he was best.

I know exactly what you are saying, however you still need a quality horse. Just look at the Secretariat, Tizdejavu had no excuses as the favorite.

I'm not so sure, but that's a very fair opinion.

Ateamstupid,

Just an additional comment, I think Shea should have used his horse earlier on to get position where he could have avoided trouble, European riders like to wait for daylight and perhaps that is what should be done on the long european tracks, here in America you have to risk using abit of horse early on.

I agree 100%. Shea was here EARLY. He should have tried to get a mount in a turf race (Hell, he could have paid one of the ridiculous jocks to 'take' his mount if he wanted) to get a feel for the course in race conditions...

Good discussion here, that is why I am siding on conservatism on Archi getting up if he had a clear path, he may have, but Shea had alot of horse he didn't use so oncourse Archi came with a run when he got daylight. There are some European, Dubai, Aussie horses that are just more effective on long straight tracks. The perfect illustration of that that I can remember is Rock Of Gibralter running out of room at Arlington where DomeDriver got the dream run. Rock of Gibralter was unbeatable on those European tracks.

Not debating that - but - you don't need the BEST horse. . .

I'm pretty sure the Rock losing had nothing to do with his jockey not being familiar with the course or from it not being a long enough stretch. He was forced to steady and shift to the outside when Landseer broke down in front of him.

NT