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Originally Posted by slotdirt
I'm shocked.
On a more serious note, where the heck does Dutrow/IEAH find these horses? Kipling? Lucky Lionel? Untuttable???!?!?
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Again, it's Paul Pompa, NOT IEAH. He gave the horse to Dutrow to train. And this gelding was no secret to the horse-buying crowd. He ran a Thoro-Graph 4 in the maiden-breaker July 27 last year that caught a lot of people's attention and later won the Seacliff going a mile. He also has a half brother that was a stakes winner (the Seacliff in fact!). Kathleen O'Connell kept trying to stretch him out, and it's pretty clear he's at his best sprinting.
The sheet figures are the key for the guys that buy these horses whether it's a Benny the Bull by Lucky Lionel and Kip Deville by Kipling in the case of IEAH or Student Council by Kingmambo in the case of Thoro-Graph's Jerry Brown for Ro Parra's Millenium Farms. They see the sharp figures or patterns on obscure horses or mediocre form types and try to acquire these under-appreciated assets.
I'm not a particularly big Dutrow fan, but before accusing him of 'miracle work', recognize that he had 2 months with 'Phil' and he was returning him to what is likely his best aptitude. Say what you want about Dutrow, but acknowledge that a horse going from O'Connell to him is certain to improve. And also, I'll admit I'm not a BSF guru, but that Beyer looks too high. You Luckie Mann had run a previous best 107 Beyer winning the Birdonawire two back, and he likely gets a 113. Kelly Leak's previous best was an 84 and Ju Jitsu Jax an 86, and they are looking at a 101-103 or so.
Is it likely that all the top finishers moved that far up? The boy's race number must have been made off the girl's race an hour later since those figures are close in line with High Resolve and Dubai Majesty's figure patterns and their race was run more than a full second slower: 1:10.2 versus 1:09.0.
Will be interesting to see what This One's for Phil does this spring. If that fig is accurate, it may knock him out for awhile. It took a long time for him to recover from his big fig win at 2.