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Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind
Cowtown Cat's last two victories, against dramatically sub-par fields, were both earned while taking advantage of strong track biases. In the Gotham he sat the perfect tuck on a golden rail and rallied to beat a very mediocre sprinter who was stretching out and didn't even receive a perfect trip having been denied the lead, and rail, in the early part of the race. In the Illinois Derby he loafed on the lead, while taking advantage of another track that was more than extremely kind to inside speed, against the previously mentioned poor field.
Not only is Cowtown Cat one of the least likely winners of the 2007 Kentucky Derby, he isn't even particularly likely to ever win another race.
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If this was any other year, I would not give Cowtown Cat a second look, but these horses are all slow. His best Beyer only trails the best Derby 3yo Beyer by 5 points, that difference can be easily achieved by a 3yo at this time of year. Your points of the perfect trips and easy leads are well taken, but at some point you have to credit the horse for taking advantage of those biases and setups. He doesn't fight the rider and can be used however the pace scenario dictates. It's not like he is a one hit wonder, his best Beyer as a 2yo and 3yo is only seperated by 8 points, that's not a huge difference giving the allowance for age improvement. I don't believe in all of these Derby myths, but he's coming into this race great, 2yo foundation, solid 3yo campaign, and 4 weeks until the Derby. When you are trying to seperate horses, I view this as a positive. There's some speed horses in here that are quitters this year, Stormello, Liquidity, Teuflesburg, maybe they all don't go, but I would take my chances with Cowtown than any of these guys.
I really don't care what kind of remarks are made, it's not important to me, what others think. I don't think I am stepping that outside of the box with Cowtown Cat relative to this years competition, but if others do that's fine, it should help the case at the window. It's like in Baseball or Basketball, when comparing players to other eras, it's not relevant, unless they are playing against each other. Cowtown is not running against last years horses and it doesn't matter what has happened in the past relative to this year.