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Old 10-28-2006, 04:29 PM
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Dunbar Dunbar is offline
The Curragh
 
Join Date: May 2006
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Quote:
Originally Posted by philcski
I actually have Invasor a length faster on my figures, paired 125's vs. paired 124's (beyer equivalents of about 117 and 116.)

I'm pretty confident in them being solid figures, the runbacks have borne them out well- for example, Premium Tap got a 118 for his Whitney (beaten 7 lengths) and paired that in the Woodward. (Note that as trips are extremely important in determining the figure a horse earns i usually check the figures on runbacks where no trouble was encountered, such as PT's Woodward.)

That being said 1 length is nothing and racing luck can ruin either advantage. They'll both be A's on my tickets with very little backups. I also see this as similar to '04 with GZ but with TWO standouts... there's a ton of upset possiblities in the other races to make some huge pick-payoffs, like '04.
I don't have them very far apart either, based solely on their past races. But I don't like the long layoff for Invasor. And Invasor comes out on the short end of a significant weight swing. I also consider Jara a negative compared to Castellano. Jara is very good, but he has not been in many of these extremely high pressure races. Plus, I have to give Bernardini a nudge in the figures for the stranglehold Castellano has had on him near the wire. When I put it all together, I have Bernardini about 4 times more likely to win the race than Invasor.

--Dunbar
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Curlin and Hard Spun finish 1,2 in the 2007 BC Classic, demonstrating how competing in all three Triple Crown races ruins a horse for the rest of the year...see avatar
photo from REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
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