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Originally Posted by Dunbar
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
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I did say that the only difficult part was trying to come up with the alternative to Big Brown. I agree that fewer preps poses a problem, but I still don't get the issue with synthetic. Colonel John may have looked fast in the dirt work, but his races did not scream that he was fast enough and he was the best of the synthetic group. didn't the synthetic speed numbers turn out to be very fairly well replicated on dirt? You really had to project some improvement on to him in order to make the case, and it was a flimsy case based more on the fact that he looked the part. I played this race wrong, thats for sure.