Quote:
Originally Posted by NTamm1215
My biggest concerns with Eskendereya are where he's going to be early in a race that will have a significantly faster pace than what he's recently seen and how frazzled John Velazquez is going to be.
The two best non-Calvin Borel rides in recent Derby memory to me were Desormeaux on Big Brown and that was mostly because the horse was just 1000x better than his competition and Prado on Barbaro, which was a similar situation. Both times they let their horse settle into a good stalking spot and took off when ready. Considering how tractable Eskendereya is I think it won't cause an issue. Basically, I'm saying that JV needs to not panic if he's a bit farther back than normal, that's likely going to happen. If he tries to ride the horse to stay with the pace early then I don't know if he can win, I can't be sure he's THAT much better than the rest of the crop.
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It's not just about Velazquez. One of the nagging questions about Eskendereya, IMO, is what do you make of his Breeders' Cup effort (and I say that as someone who liked him that day off his Pilgrim). That was the only race where he did not get a favorable trip and causes me to have at least some doubts about how he may handle the Derby experience. Was the performance a result of him not caring for the synthetic racing surface (even though he was bred to handle it and had run well in his turf debut), or was it that he did not handle racing in traffic that well? If he's going to be mid-pack in the Derby and the BC Juvenile
is indicative of how he may handle adversity, then the Derby's a wide-open affair. Of course, he may have matured since the BC to the extent that this is a non-issue; can any of us know for certain?