Royal Delta 2.0

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

This is a bit silly, and an extremely lame attempt at "I told you so." The fact that a newly turned 3YO ran 11 Beyer points higher than her maiden win, which was off a five month layoff, and then ten points better than her second start off that layoff, hardly proves the "this horse could easily have gone much faster" BS that gets spewed with relative regularity, and is, in fact, BS in virtually every case ( they said it about Bernardini, like it was a given, and it proved to not be the case ). In this case, it was likely a combination of the fact that maybe she could have gone a little faster and she's improving with time, experience, and training.

Unique Bella is a terrific horse. Possibly better than last year's flavor of the month/year. Do you really need to say "I told you so" to make yourself feel better?

So are you saying that it makes no difference whether a jockey is asking a horse or not? Horses just run as fast as they can no matter what? How could a jockey even position his horse in a race if horses will just run as fast as they can no matter what? You obviously don't think that. So why would you think that a horse will run as fast as they can at the end of a race if they are not being asked? You think a horse will allow a jockey to restrain him early in a race, but not late in a race? That makes no sense.

I agree with you that people often make a mistake in thinking that a horse is not all out simply because the horse is not being whipped. If a horse is being fairly vigorously hand-ridden, they are probably all out, regardless of whether they are being whipped. But if a horse is actually being restrained, which does not happen particularly often, the chances are the horse could have run faster. It's the same in a morning workout. The more you ask a horse, the faster the horse will run, at the beginning of the work, and at the end of the work.

With regard to Elate, I said in my first post in this thread that I think she is a very nice filly. But the chances of her being as good as Unique Bella are extremely unlikely.

Instead of criticizing me for saying, "I told you so", why not compliment me for making a good call. I said I though this filly was the best 2 year old filly in the country after her maiden win. As of right now, I think that looks like a pretty good call. It may not have taken a genius to figure out that she was a great filly, but it's never a sure thing that an impressive maiden winner will turn out to be a great horse.

With regard to me teasing RHT a little bit, it was all in good fun. I will have no problem with him teasing me a little bit the next time he is right and I am wrong. In this business we are all going to be wrong quite often.