Eskendereya skipping FL Derby, prefering Wood

[NTamm1215]

Originally Posted by asudevil

Oh, now it's the quirky owner. I understand.

That track has been a model for how to do everything wrong. The seating, the concessions, the parking, the paddock location, the morning line odds for goodness sake!! Now the brain trust decides that 6 weeks is the right play? That's a recipe for another Bluegrass.

Ahmed had alot to do with all of this.

There's a new management team in place this year and considering how quickly most of them were installed prior to the start of the meet, they've done a pretty good job. Handle has been solid despite a rainier January and February than normal in South Florida, the all-turf Pick 4s on Sundays have handled extremely well and the racing has been very typical of GP.

It doesn't seem at all surprising to you that four days before the race Zayat came to the realization that six weeks was too much to the Derby? Pletcher had said for weeks that the Fla Derby was a logical spot, he said that considering how well Eskendereya ran off of 6 weeks' rest in the FOY that it made sense to bring him to Louisville off a 6 week break. Now that a change in plans has been made by the owner, the reasoning is the time between the Fla Derby and Ky Derby.

From a business standpoint this decision was a no-brainer. If you want to say it was a mistake because an owner decided at the 11th hour that the spacing to the Ky Derby was too excessive then that's fine. However, his timing was awfully odd.

NT