Najjaar

MaTH716 · #1 10-20-2011, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dahoss

It feels like the track is a bit fairer today than it has been at points in this meet. The horse did well to just miss though, however I like a different horse coming out of this race.

Travel Advisory was moving well and was just inside of Najjar coming into the stretch. Najjar was kept clear and Manny Cruz (please,please,please go back to Calder) on Travel Advisory tried to split horses and got totally shut off. I don't think he was winning the race anyway, but he seemed to be moving with Najjar. He ended up 10th and the chart comment is "failed to respond" so I'm kind of interested in seeing where he shows up. His turf races before this were solid, so maybe next time on the grass at Churchill with a better price than he would have been normally based on today's 10th?

Hossy I do think the track was a littler fairer yesterday as well. Prado came from last driving down the middle of the track in the 3rd to win. But the thing about the 5th race was the pace was slow (Kent pretty much stole the race on the lead) and if you look in the lane it seemed like everyone else was just spinning their wheels and not making up any ground. Then you had Najjar flying from the outside just missing. I was just impressed that he closed so well into a relatively slow pace while battling a track that has been pretty speed biased (especially for horses on the inside).

As far as Travel Advisory goes, that's a great catch. I know I missed it the first time around. The real shame is that there seemed to be a big hole there. Not sure what Cruz was thinking, it was such a poorly timed move when he finally decided to hit that hole and by that time it closed and he was sawed off. Hell, he would have been better waiting the extra second and then just swinging around the horse that eventually sawed him off. He wouldn't have had to check and would have had a good chance of hitting the board. Hopefully his price drifts upwards a bit next time out. But it really was a horrible unconfident ride by Cruz. I guess he gets away with that at Calder when he only has to deal with 4-5 other horses in the race.

MaTH716 · #2 10-20-2011, 08:36 AM

Here's a replay of the race if anyone's interested.

http://replays.robertsstream.com/rac...1110191517KED5

Bigsmc · #3 10-20-2011, 10:56 AM

Hey golfer,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dahoss

It feels like the track is a bit fairer today than it has been at points in this meet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaTH716

Hossy I do think the track was a littler fairer yesterday as well.

Guess I wasn't the only one....

PatCummings · #4 10-20-2011, 02:00 PM

The Trakus details from the race show Najjaar covered a whopping 63 feet more than Captain Ben, the winner, and still lost by only a head. 63 feet = about 7.4 lengths.

Najjaar covered his final quarter in 23.49 seconds, which was fastest in the field of 12. Captain Ben had the second fastest final quarter after setting the early pace, but that was only 24.07, 0.58 seconds slower than Najjaar.

golfer · #5 10-20-2011, 02:28 PM

Quite simply, anyone who bet on or TOUTED Captain Ben was quite fortunate, and just because the track was playing a little bit more fairly, doesn't mean it still wasn't favoring speed.

Bigsmc · #6 10-20-2011, 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by golfer

Quite simply, anyone who bet on or TOUTED Captain Ben was quite fortunate, and just because the track was playing a little bit more fairly, doesn't mean it still wasn't favoring speed.

Stop it.

golfer · #7 10-20-2011, 06:55 PM

Look either the track is screwed up or the timer is, because the $10K claimer Baby Afleet set a track record in the last race. In fact the last 2 races were both track records, although I'm sure they haven't run that many 1 5/8ths on the main.

PatCummings · #8 10-21-2011, 09:31 AM

You think the heavy rains have had anything to do with it?