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Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind
Right....but that's a sort of " after the fact " kind of thing....as well as obvious.
I think the point being made is that Visionaire may not have been so much as closing in the Blue Grass but not falling apart like many of his rivals in that race. The contention is obviously not that some of the exotic fillers in the Derby will be " passing tired rivals " but that Visionaire only gave the illusion of running OK in the Blue Grass....when in fact he wasn't.
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I think this is something that needs to be considered in general. In a large field, with the possibility of a contested pace, and middle moves, there's always the possibility that some late runner will pick up the pieces. But you can't handicap this way because the ONLY WAY this type gets up is with a complete collapse of the race. Typically, this type can't run otherwise. So, in the Bluegrass, for example, Visionare would've need the speed, the chasers, the middle movers, AND all the other late runners to COLLAPSE, in order to win the race. (This is not to say that Visionaire is this one dimensional, only that his last effort was of this type.)
Typically, there are other horses who have shown that they don't need ABSOLUTELY PERFECT SETUPS to run credibly. These are the ones I focus on.