Lucky and Zenyatta will eat these two for lunch at 1 1/4...

Lookin at Lucky will get his brains bashed in by Blame.

NT

WEST COAST RULEZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!11!!!!!!!

Not a bad performance from a Super Derby runner. :)

I don't think so, but who knows.

I guess it's time for Mine That Bird to step down in class.

Dressage?

It was the only two-turn dirt route of the entire day.

As for my raw figure for the race ...

96 Pace and 104 Final.

This becomes a tricky figure to make and one you could only make an educated guess at and shouldn't trust.

Either todays track was much slower and more tiring than par - or this group royally sucks. I doubt both the latter and former and the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

I really wasn't impressed by anyone's performance in the race. Guess I missed something. I thought QR was flat and Blame benefitted.

If everybody stays the coarse and make it to the Breeders Cup Classic it will be a the best yet.

Most likely.

This was the Quality Road that "showed up" in the Hal's Hope at GP earlier this year. I really hope they have an explanation .. because other than getting hit in the eye repeatedly with a braid bead .. I'm surprised at how awful his race was.

Had he closed his right eye through the stretch or flinched a little more than he did - I would be sold that he might have been distracted, but I doubt that did anything more than just annoy him.

I wrote about this on my site, but believe it or not, the list of horses who lost the Super Derby but later won the whitney includes...

Island Whirl
Will's Way
Awesome Again
Lawyer Ron
Blame

There is some merit here I think. Quality Road was definitely not on his game. I, like many others, was ready to give it to him on the first turn.

I witness first-hand at Gulfstream this year how goofy the track is... it's 9f's but the stretch is short and the jockeys ride it different. You turn for home and you're already at the finish. That helps a horse like Quality Road immensely. Plus, some horses really seem to thrive there... more than the "horse for course" stuff at other tracks.

Regardless though the pace was slow, and Blame was up against it and he still got the job done, and he'll have no problem as the races get longer.

Yeah - I was surprised at how many real good horses haven't fired in the Super Derby and came back strong at 4. Best Pal was off the board in the Super Derby as I'm sure you know.

Too funny

Yeah, QR sure looks like the "next GZ".



Nuthin like drillin' a horse on synthetic to get them ready for a big dirt race


Lookin At Lucky :tro:

Blame :tro:

i wonder if Johnny V looking back 50 times during the race cost him the race.

Yeah, definiteily. Island Whirl won the Whitney two years later but the rest won it the following season.

I could not have said it better myself.

Granted, I didn't expect QR to lose here, but I thought he looked pretty mediocre in the Met. Mediocre might be too strong a word, but I thought the race was intensely overrated. I don't like his action when not running at GP.

111 Beyer for Blame (not buying it). . . 97 for Champagne d'Oro. 96 for Brother Bird, six points faster than his Derby winning bro.

So I'm assuming you're quite skeptical of Champagne d'Oro's figure as well as the decision was clearly made that the track slowed down during the period between the 4th and 9th?

NT