Quote:
Originally Posted by Calzone Lord
Amazingly, to Birdstone's credit, he only lost 2 lengths of ground during that supersonic middle half mile.
He was 5th by 3 lengths after a half mile and 4th by 5 lengths after a mile.
Five of the nine horses in that race lost more than 11 lengths through the middle half mile.
It was basically where all the real running occurred.
Smarty Jones deserved to win that race, but Birdstone wasn't super lucky. He also had to work hard in the middle and ran ok.
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If people went back and actually watched that Belmont, they have to be very surprised at how close Birdstone was the entire race. It was far from a situation where he sucked up into a collapsed race.