And set the track record at Tampa

LOL, the Tampa Bay Derby and I'm a thoro lemming. Jeez, why does anyone make a call on here...A nose, no less. Hope you bet him. A juicy 6/5 today.

As did Any Given Saturday. 20 claimers were 7 lengths off that pace. Same distance. Let's see the variant....Easy, if it was a negative number, I'm already wrong and will happily admit it.

Street Sense did get a great trip. Any Given Saturday ran a hell of a race. It was a great show. Both of these horses look plenty good to me. I hold by my call on the monsters, Street Sense and Nobiz.

Jerry Bailey seemed really concerned Street Sense ran too hard. Did he see him get injured? Did they not say they wanted a tiring run in the sand. He got it.

It just seems to strange to stand by your claim that he is "finished" after the race today (or before it for that matter).
Does that mean he is going to be champion 3yo? No, but there is a lot of area between champion and "finished". Today he won a graded stakes race, in a quality time, and beat a fairly legitimate horse in the process. To me, that isn't a horse that is done. Will he ever win another G1 by 10 lengths like he did last November? Maybe not, but he could still be a very good horse, which I think he demonstrated today.

I don't think your last 2 sentences are compelling. You can believe in Thoro figs without thinking that Street Sense was/is through. He ran a fine race today and deserves to be considered among the top Derby contenders at this point.

Sure he may fall by the wayside. There's probably still at least a 25% chance that ANY horse you name will fall by the wayside before the Derby. There wasn't anything to not like about his run today, though.

If you truly believe he has no chance in the Derby, you will have a good chance to capitalize on that when Pool 3 of the Future Wager comes out. I suspect Street Sense will have enough or almost enough money bet on him to make up for the entire track take.

--Dunbar

100% right, in which case I am dead wrong. Maybe finished was a strong word. In the golden rail thread I said I thought he could win this race...But we'll see. Any Given Saturday impressed more but Street Sense definitely was good today, better than I thought he'd come back out of the gate.

I actually agree with you. The horse had front wraps on again today, and they are "most likely" trying to squeeze a couple of more races out of the horse. I like the Pletcher colt better for this reason.

Well, something obviously isn't right with the horse to be starting this late in the year whether or not the connections said that they had always planned on starting the horse this late. You don't start a legitimate Derby contender in the middle of March unless something is wrong. Plus, the connections said that they were having "growing" problems with the horse anyway yet they also said that the horse hadn't grew any taller or more muscular...

This could be the harshest post Randall has been forced to endure.

Really, folks, no piling on!

People have lost their minds when it comes to training and racing thoroughbreds.

Now there is a qualified opinion. First start of the year, track record, and nobody here yet knows how he came out of the race. I didn't hear anyone talk about "he wouldn't have blown out a match" or "he was absolutely exhausted coming back" or anything of the like.

I think last year's # in the BC is irrelevant. Prediciting what kind of 3yo year this colt would have, based upon that #, without knowing anything about how he was coming back, seeing works, etc. is nothing more than a statistical prediction. Put whatever faith in the # you want to as far as I am concerned.

I think Bailey's supposed "concern" could be a valid one, but again, it's absent of all important info, facts and the like.

Eric

Looked Pretty Good To Me
 

Street Sense looked pretty good to me. Am i missing something here? First time off a long layoff and probably will move forward by the time he hits the Ky Derby given that Carl is his trainer.

Anyway, it was a great horse race and i was impressed by both horses today. Right now they would have to be #1 and #1A for contenders for the Ky Derby.

I assume that both will be able to get the distance of 1 1/4 miles, although that is obviously unknown as it is for everyone else.

I also assume that any trainer would take either one of these to run in the Derby.

Only question is that in the Derby Calvin Borel might not have the luxury of running up the rail like he did the last two races and save all of that ground...

PSH

The babying of horses, especially ones with immense talent, is such a negative I don't even know where to start. One trend that has been done away with for no good reason is starting a horse's season off with a sprint race. I have no idea why this has become a bad thing except for trainers/owners wanting to keep horses from losing. Of course after any losing race in the months of Jan thru April we get a steady dose of " we really dont need to win this...this is just a stepping stone...we dont want to kill him before the big day..." I dont know why I am so ornery tonight. Sorry.:mad:

I hear you Chuck, but doesn't all that play into people wanting a horse to "peak" so to speak? Maybe it's two sides of the same coin, or maybe it's BS, LOL.


Eric

Whatever happened to good horses running fast? I guess that was before EPO.

Well in an effort to help Randall out here, I will mention that on November 7th, after loving him going into the BC, I decided that Street Sense would be the horse to break the Juvenile/Derby jinx on my blog. Definitively.

So obviously I don't think he's "finished," and it seems nobody but Randall thinks he truly is. I was thrilled with his race today, to be honest. With only two preps, a dogfight in one doesn't seem like it's going to kill him, especially in his first race back.

It showed a side of him that I think was key to see at this point - that first off the layoff against a horse who many have ranked in their top 8, he dug in when he was tired and managed to pull out a win.

I couldn't be happier with today's race.