Is I Want Revenge's Gotham , this year's Pyro-Risen Star ??

[Bobby Fischer]

I want to re-visit IWR's Gotham, I think the discussion got sidetracked prematurely with IC and bobby, & leftbank redboarding sillyness...


GOTHAM IWR

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

The inner has been even, save from Feb 16th til Feb 27th, and I Want Revenge had as easy a trip as possible.....stalking the crawling pace of a distance challenged horse.

Originally Posted by the_fat_man

Guess I saw it differently than most. I thought that I Want Revenge ran a bangup race given the setup: how often do horses contend OUTSIDE and draw off on the inner dirt? But I won't get too excited, as he probably didn't really beat much.

Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS

Easy trip or not I Want Revenge... has a very ugly turf pedigree and was certainly one of the best projections of the So Cal horses likely to improve coming East from a pedigree standpoint.

for some reason , the commentary following IWR's gotham performance reminded me a little of the classic discussion regarding Pyro's "breakout" Risen Star performance (visually impressive vs weak competition) :


RISEN STAR 2008

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Well, in fairness, even if, like me, you weren't blown away by Pyro, it was his first start in a few months and he ran two very nice races last year. He's not a questionable distance horse like Circular Quay and he has a fairly legitimate overall record. When I said today's race was slow, it was still faster than a lot of the horse's people are confusing themselves into believing are contenders, and obviously he did have the very slow pace to overcome. I just tend to be reticent to fall for horses with visually impressive closes as more often than not they are a result of circumstance. The positive for Pyro was that he did it against a very slow pace. The negative was that he did it against modified allowance horses.

Originally Posted by the_fat_man

This is deceiving: it was run like a turf race in the sense that a horse from far back won. But it wasn't your typical turf race, of this sort, where there are multiple moves and a cavalry charge late. This was the only horse running late. What this horse did was unique.

Originally Posted by ateamstupid

How exactly could [Pyro] have run faster than Indian Blessing behind that pace?

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

By the way, the answer to how he could have run faster than Indian Blessing is " if she had run worse. "