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Originally Posted by ArlJim78
i thought we were judging them at the time of the derby? who would try to make a definitive judgement about the entire season in early May?
I really don't know what the poly surfaces have to do with it.
and how can you say its the most difficult crop in years to handicap when a 2:1 favorite wins? the only difficulty was if you wanted to play against Big Brown trying to find a viable alternative. but it was real easy to look at the field and find the best horse talent-wise. that is seldom the case.
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I agree with Somerfrost here. I thought it was the most difficult Derby to cap, too.
Yes, Big Brown looked like the best horse. Was he betable at 2.4-1 from post 20 in his 4th start? I didn't think so. I thought he should have been the fav, but somewhere between 9-2 and 5-1. So, where do you look for value once you decide that Big Brown is over bet? (I'm still saying, like you, Jim, that he was the best horse going in--but that doesn't mean it was wrong to look elsewhere for value.)
Looking elsewhere is where the problems started, and the biggest problem was what to do with the races on synthetic. Pyro? Col John? Cool Coal Man? Monba? Cowboy Cal? How do you evaluate those horses? I found it very tough.
In my initial line I had both Pyro and Col John at around 20-1, based on my usual capping. I ended up fudging them to 10-1, because so may cappers I respect were (1) tossing the Blue Grass (but usually only for Pyro, among those that ran badly!) and (2) saying Col. John looked fantastic on dirt. Even at 10-1 I gave those two less chance than most, and I was not at all confident that I was right about it.
Unfortunately with the tendency to run fewer preps and the spread of synthetic, I don't see things getting easier any time soon.
--Dunbar