[RockHardTen1985]

Originally Posted by analyizethis

Because many of the runners from 2009’s Classic have stayed in training maybe we can use hindsight to judge whether or not the field “sucked”.

So how did they do?

Zenyatta, of course, has started 5 times with 5 wins; Gio Ponti started 6 times with 2 wins and 3 seconds (fourth in the Dubai World Cup), Twice Over had 5 group one starts 2 firsts, 2 seconds and a third, Summer Bird, Einstein and Colonel John all were retired, but except for the fact that Summer Bird was on the wrong surface I would content that they hardly sucked. Richard’s Kid had 2 grade 1 wins and a grade 2 win, Rip Van Winkle had 1 win and 3 seconds in 4 starts, Awesome Gem, Regal Ransom and Mine That Bird were the worse horses in the field and probably did suck and lastly Girolamo had a win in 2 starts this year and will be heavily bet in this year’s sprint although he was clearly in the wrong race in 2009.

So given that the race was on a synthetic surface (although not Zenyatta’s home track), I would conclude that the field didn’t “suck” but in fact was pretty good.

In 2010 on a dirt surface, I think that the field is better and the defending champion mare’s campaign this year really told us nothing about how she will perform that we didn’t already know last year. In terms of fair value her odds should be a little higher than the 2.8 – 1 (representing about 22.25% of the win pool) from last year. (By the way I believe that her odds were about right last year.) This year, although my handicapping isn’t complete, my guess is that she should be about 7 – 2 (or a little less than 20% of the win). As far as the rest I would say that Blame, Quality Road and Lookin at Lucky should all be between 4 – 1 and 6 – 1, Fly Down about 10 -1, Gio Ponti and Haynesfield 15 -1 and everybody else over 20 or 30 to one.

Did you analyizethis?