tha lava man thread....
 

the west coast peeps have been very quiet about the lava man....hmmm..i tossed him first...hes a game horse and no disrespect but why did they bring him to that dance..hell he would have run better in the mile..

I liked him, I thought the whole shipping thing was off course, because he looked like he was going bad before he shipped...

they took him to keenland i heard..and he didnt like the change .then churchill...how about right to churchill and let him get used to it,,,,

I respect Lave Man as a game, talented horse who will NOT run well outside of his home environment...

Let him at least finish before we start talking about him.

I liked him a lot. He was training great. :o

I wonder why he can't travel, General Challenge was like that...It's not like he's just winning at one track out there, he's won at Hollywood, Santa Anita, and Del Mar and maybe some others that I am missing...Those can't all be similar surfaces, not to mention he's won on turf...

Wait, why did they bring him to the Big Dance? Why wouldn't they?

Well, he won four grade 1s, three million-dollar races and is currently the all-time leading Cal-bred. Shipping out aside, it wasn't like anyone wanted to come in to California and face him over his home track. You'd think a million bucks would be enough incentive, but the truth is nobody wanted to face him here. And not to make excuses, but I gave him every benefit of the doubt for his three previous clunkers outside of California. Not so much now, but before it was definitely debatable.

My take? California horses spend a lot of time shipping East yet Eastern horses rarely come West. Why is that? And no lame excuses like the tracks are faster here. Plenty of speedy types race on the Right Coast and Cali-based horses still beat them straight up. If anything you'd think that when Cali horses ship they'd find the "deeper" tracks a hurdle.

But that's just me...

As soon as I saw his dull coat I tossed him.

Lava Man is a notorious stallrunner.. When he leaves home, he'll pace and run the stall endlessly. It's just his make up. He's not comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings and frets at the upheaval. No way to cure that in the midst of a racing career, and no way to get one to perform his best if he has that composition.. The horse handlers here can better expand on this...

Thus the dull coat!

He is such a good story. He is good for racing. Gives people like me the hope that one day we can get our hands on a Lava Man.

As it was told to me, he settled in pretty well at Keeneland from the minute he got there. And, truth be told, he's shipped all over the Southern California area (won at three different tracks) so he's conquered his stall running before. I've only stood outside his stall a half-dozen times or so and he was sleeping every time, once pretty soon after he shipped in to Santa Anita. So maybe the stallrunning is just who he is and not really a symptom of the whole shipping thing.

And the only person I truly trust in judging horseflesh who I know watched him a lot over his whole tenure with Doug O'Neill said he saw two completely different animals between the one training at Keeneland and the one who was at Churchill. He saw him the day he left for Louisville and again the following Thursday and said he thought to himself, "uh oh..."

He did look good at Keeneland. At Churchill he looked awful. Not sure what happened but he didnt look like the same horse at all.

Well it was a$$-freezing cold for like two weeks leading up to BC Day, so I'm thinking that had a lot to do with a lot of it.

However, some horses just "fur up" at the first sign of chilly weather. I had a horse (a nice hunter, too) that would get all fuzzy the minute the California climate dare even threaten to dip below 60 degrees! Out here, for example, I see lots of still short coats and others that have already been body clipped. Of course nobody expected the Indian Summer we've had for the past few days, but when it was cooler some got furry and some didn't. And no, I don't think it has anything to do with the quality of the help. Some of the fuzzy ones came out of some of the most reputable (and well-blanketed, mind you) barns.

In Lava Man's case, I think he didn't like Louisville...

Got it. Excuses for Lava Man are perfectly acceptable, but none for Bernardini.

Because it's a completely different element. You might as well call California racing something other than "thoroughbred," because for years, Cali form has been as exclusive as Polytrack form is today. Some horses love it out there, and those who do can't run anywhere else (i.e. Lava Man), and some horses hate it out there.

I didn't think you were being an a$$ at all... I was kinda trying to figure out why the coats were dull. I don't know at all, I never saw them. I took your word for it! :)