Ride on Normandy Invasion

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by ninetoone

I'll start by saying I don't make a pimple on most of the handicapper's asses on here, but I do enjoy all the posts & I've been on the board since the beginning & even the original Yahoo board. I'm just a weekend warrior who knows a little more than the average wing nut out there. The way I see it is that Javier gave a horse with a lot of prior excuses a chance to prove that he was a champion, and the horse just didn't have it. I know JC's getting hammered on here for this, but the fact of the matter is, he's been on a couple of awesome horses in his career & he knows what a truly special horse can do. Orb's time was fairly ordinary & so was the Beyer (I know someone will correct me if I'm wrong). As Travis said in his post, "Only two horses made a similar move and finished-up: Big Brown and Barbaro." JC gave NI a chance to prove that he was one of those special types & he was wrong. The winning time was 2:02.89, nothing special...the way I see it, JC made the decision that he had the best horse & a horse that could sustain that kind of bid & run. If you could have frozen time at a mile & maybe even showed him his fractions, would he change anything? I'm not sure, maybe, maybe not. if he wrangles him back & loses, he gets criticized for that too I guess. I'm not sure if the Barbaro & Big Brown Derbies are good analogies or not as far as internal fractions, etc....but I did bet Barbaro (the last time I had a winner) and I remember being happy at the top of the stretch that Prado was going to at least give me a chance to be right....and I felt the same way the other day. Sorry for the rambling post & please be gentle, I'm just a layperson that thoroughly enjoys the discussion!!

I'm not sure I understand your logic. I agree with you that if NI was some incredible horse (for example Secretariat), that he could have won the race, even with the premature move. How is that relevant? NI is not Secretariat.

NI got a bad ride and it cost him a couple of lengths. Nobody on here said that NI was Secretariat. Nobody on here said that the race NI ran in the Derby was as good as the race Barbaro ran in the Derby. All we said was that NI's chances were compromised by a premature move.

I think 95% of experienced handicappers share the belief that NI would have run 2nd with a more patient ride. I really don't think it takes a genius to see that NI moved too soon. A lot of us on here disagree about a lot of things when it comes to handicapping and watching races but we pretty much all agree that NI moved too soon. It's not a close call.