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Originally Posted by CSC
The track was playing for speed all day and he looked comfortable doing it, I don't think it's advantageous to say horses of this caliber will go 25 and 50 and run better, a horse would be fighting a rider for 4 furlongs. In my opinion Summer Bird had the worst trip of the 3 horses yesterday. The results skew the criticisms after the race, majority of the times a horse that takes the lead at the top of the stretch as MTB did wins, if he won there wouldn't be any of this moved too soon debate, on the other hand it is very rare a horse passes 3 horses in the stretch to win the Belmont going away, at one point I thought Kent left him too much to do, but he wins and then all is well.
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He moved too soon. Yeah, a horse rarely loses taking the lead at the top of the stretch, but again, how many of them had taken the lead running a sub 23 second 5th quarter? I don't care how fast the track is...that is too fast to last in a 12f race. I think it was a clear case of over-confidence by the jockey taking the horse out of what had made him jump up in class. All is always well when you win. Internal fractions did in Smarty Jones, Real Quiet and MTB yesterday. When Summer Bird was the only horse in the race remotely running the last furlong, I can come to no other conclusion that no matter what problems occurred in the trip, he was aided by them. It allowed him to finish the race when no other horse could yesterday.