[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Phalaris1913

If you get outrun, it doesn't matter if you fire or not - you're not getting to the front. There's this myth that just because a horse likes to run on or near the front that he's going to get there if he wants, unless something's amiss. That's not true. Some early speed horses are quicker out of the gate. Trying to make a slower speed horse keep pace with a faster one has one likely outcome: the slower one will get beaten, and the faster he has to go than he would be comfortable with, the worse he's going to run every remaining step of the way. LITF is simply not all that fast out of the gate and thus far, he has gotten outrun whenever he meets decent horses.

I am not a Calder expert, but I know it tends to be a slowish track so the Smile fractions of 21 3/5 and 44 1/5 are probably even hotter than they would be at many tracks. Last year, LITF got an easy lead through 22 2/5 and 45 2/5 in the Carry Back and won for fun. They went a lot faster than that in the Smile and he simply couldn't cope. In fact, he ran his opening quarter about as fast as he did in the Carry Back last year, but that put him midpack against open company rather than winging on the lead against 3YOs, which is pretty much his story in a nutshell. This horse has yet to win a race against open company in which something else threw a sub-22-second opening quarter at him.

Some people seem to think that early pace is trivial, but actually, it's critically important, particularly in the case of forwardly placed sprinters. The difference between a comfortable 22-and-change quarter on a neutral track vs. a 21-and-change quarter on the same track is potentially monumental. Given that tracks vary from one race to the next, never mind between tracks, LITF has shown that when able to get an easy lead, or with only one weak horse in front of him, through 22/44-45 fractions, he's strong middle and late. That happened in the races against the nonentities in the age-restricted races that LITF shipped all over creation to run in last year. He also had no trouble with the horses that showed up for the Bay Meadows race against older. (Considering that it was scheduled for the same date as the Vosburgh and within a week of the Ancient Title and announced about three weeks in advance, you can imagine that it didn't exactly draw the best sprinters in the land.) By the way, LITF is two for five in open-age races.

Regarding Kelly's Landing, you might want to actually check the horse's lines before you speak. KL is not exactly a speed demon, but he is not without speed. Actually, he prepped for the Aristides in a CD allowance where he was battling on the lead in 21 3/5 and 44 1/5, which is faster than anything LITF has successfully handled outside of northern California and Turf Paradise. KL was two and a half lengths behind LITF after the opening quarter of the Aristides and whittled that down to a length after a half, a margin that LITF was unable to extend greatly thereafter despite a perfect scenario. To put that in perspective, KL is a G3 winner who has been unplaced in his graded stakes sprints starts away from CD.

I learned a long time ago that it's impossible to budge an opinion, so I'm not going to waste any more time researching this topic this time around. It needs to be said, however. There are those of us who feel, and have felt for some time, that LITF is overrated and we have some justification to do so.

You obviously do not have Kelly's Landing's past performances in front of you. When I made my post, I did have his past performances in front of me and they are in front of me right now. KL was 4 lengths behind LITF after a quarter mile in the Aristides. LITF has much more early speed than KL. Your contention that LITF does not have that much early speed is absurd. LITF has as much early speed as practically any horse in the country. He's gone :43 1/5. The reason that he went the half in :45 in some of his races was because that was all he needed to do to get the lead in those races. He can basically go as fast as he wants. If they go :43 3/5, he'll be either on the lead or no further back than a length.
With regard to your contention that he's overrated, he could be slightly overrated. It's possible. But that's not really the issue. The issue is whether you're opinion is being based on races that he didn't fire. He certainly didn't fire on Saturday. There was obviously something bothering him and that was why he was behind a horse early who he is normally 4 lengths in front of. And what makes you think that he ran his best in the BC Sprint? Horses are not machines. You can't ship a horse back and forth all across the country and expect them to keep firing every time. He had too tough of a campaign last year and it finally caught up to him. You can't judge a horse off one or two races. Why would you judge him off one or two bad races but not judge other horses the same way? How many bad races has Taste of Paradise run? He almsot won the BC Sprint but if you look at his Form he has lost a ton of races to mediocre horses. Look at Silver Train. Look at all of his bad races. He ran 3rd to Tani Maru in a restricted stakes race. A couple races later, he got beat by Santana Springs and Social Probabtion in the Amsterdam. He lost to Spooky Mulder this year.
People criticize LITF because he mainly faced 3 year olds last year. At least he was facing the best 3 year old sprinters. Silver Train faced nothing but 3 year olds last year and he wasn't even facing good 3 year olds. He was losing allowance races against 3 year olds. Silver Train ran 6 times last year before the BC Sprint. He ran against 3 year olds in five of those six races. The only time he faced older horses was in a non-winners other than allowance race. So Silver Train was runing against far worse 3 year olds than LITF and he was losing. How do you explain that? If you look at Silver's Train's past performances last year leading up to the BC Sprint, you can't even compare his races to LITF's races. Silver Train was facing bad 3 year olds and was losing.