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Originally Posted by ArlJim78
I always thought that if I was an expert horse person like yourself, that I could use that knowledge to predict how a horse would run on a given day. Now I'm realizing that it is a complete waste of time.
Any Given Saturday ran his best race to date. Street Sense ran not as good as his juvenile race but NO ONE expected that he would repeat that effort first off the layoff so his performance is perfectly in line with his previous high standards. They both achieved very nice 101 beyers and equaled the track record. And all this was done while they were sore and did not have the pretty strides that they had last year. I'm also kinda shocked that two training icons could have done such a poor job not maintaining the horses pretty two year old stride, and allowing plainly obvious sore horses to compete.
The whole thing is quite perplexing, why wouldn't the soreness and lack of stride fluidity show up in the actual performance?
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It did show up in the actual performance. Not in terms of how hard the horses ran, but in terms of how they looked. However, as BTW pointed out, a good horse can run through their physical problems. It does not mean that the horse is going to last. It also means that I won't bet on races where favorites like these are running. You don't know if they are going to break down or win by open lengths. Besides, I always stay away from favorites anyway. I don't like to bet anything that is under 3-1.
Good trainers run sore horses all of the time. Bobby Frankel ran Empire Maker in the Derby didn't he? Badge of Silver was sore as he could be while working at Churchill Downs before the BC too. He finished in the money. What about BG Cat? Front wraps for the first time and then he all of a sudden has a broken leg after the race?
I actually gave Street Sense a good shot to win. My outlook on everything was that they were just trying to squeeze a few more races out of him and that he would probably be good for a few more starts.