9/4 (PRX): Smarty Jones, Greenwood Cup, Turf Monster (G3's), LeVine

[10 pnt move up]

Originally Posted by ateamstupid

Thanks for posting that letter of recommendation, really compelling stuff, but maybe you'd like to comment on the discussion at hand, whether or not Paul Reddam is a butcher worthy of derision for taking a shot in a $600,000 five-horse race with a talented 3-year-old?

The only time you seem to post is if someone post a critical thought about someone in the industry. Your the board apologist it seems.

The placement of the Reddam horses has been odd, and certainly were not the only ones to say that it may do more harm than good for the overall stock that they run.

[ateamstupid]

Originally Posted by 10 pnt move up

The only time you seem to post is if someone post a critical thought about someone in the industry. Your the board apologist it seems.

The placement of the Reddam horses has been odd, and certainly were not the only ones to say that it may do more harm than good for the overall stock that they run.

No. I'm in favor of trainers running their horses and taking shots, and I thought this was a ridiculous spot to criticize, much less speculate that it would ruin the horse's career. And once again, I've been here for over a decade, but because I don't want to say Irad Ortiz is trying to injure people or Paul Reddam is a butcher, I'm a board apologist. OK.

[King Glorious]

My feeling has always been that the class and ability of the horses determines if it's a strong race or not. Not the grade. I've also learned that old rules aren't as important anymore. It used to be that if you had only two preps for the Derby, you couldn't win. If you never started as a 2yp, you couldn't win. Probably a few more I'm forgetting. While I understand where Rollo was going in saying that Pavel shouldn't have been in the Dandy, I think he's looking at it too traditionally. By that, I mean that we used to always be able to count on the bigger races having the best of the crop. The best of the crop were usually extremely battle tested and proven by this point in the year. But that's rarely the case these days. In my opinion, the only disadvantage Pavel had in that race was experience. It couldn't be said with great confidence that he was not on their talent level. So why not take a shot? I don't think it makes much sense to worry about long term effects. You get 12 races out of them these days and you're considered to have had a long career. So go for it. He lost. So what. It happens. He wasn't embarrassed and it didn't lessen his chances of winning this or being a major factor in the Penn Derby if they chose to go that route. It wasn't like he was facing Java Gold, Alysheba, Lost Code, Bet Twice, Gulch, and Cryptoclearance in the Dandy.