HOTY: If Zenyatta wins the Classic...

[kgar311]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

The more I think about it, even though Rachel wasn't that impressive in the Preakness or Woodward, she may not have liked either of those tracks. I know that Borel said she didn't really handle the track at Pimlico. I didn't hear any comments from him regarding whether she liked the track at Saratoga, but I know that alot of horses don't handle that track, so she may not have liked the track there either.

So she really may have had a much bigger excuse than just going too fast early in those races. It may have been a combination of going too fast and not handling those tracks.

She may in fact be a totally different horse at tracks she likes such as Churchill, Belmont, and Monmouth.

She really did look like a different horse in those races.

So the more I think about it, if Zenyatta and Rachel faced other, I think there is a good chance it would come down to which track they ran at and how the race set up. If they ran at Santa Anita or Saratoga, my guess is that Zenyatta probably wins. But if they run at Churchill or Belmont, I think Rachel may win. The pace would obviously be a big factor too.

I was just going over Macho Again's PPs and watching some of his races. He is actually a much better horse than I realized. I had totally forgotten that he won the Stephen Foster. I think the race that Rachel ran in the Woodward was actually quite a bit better than I originally thought.

Your mindset is puzzling to me.

The only thing that I was unimpressed about this year is the way Zenyatta won her 4 prior starts. Talk about dissappointing. The feeling before each one of those races was is this the day Zen get beat by a bunch of horses that are no better then 40k claimers in NY.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by kgar311

Your mindset is puzzling to me.

The only thing that I was unimpressed about this year is the way Zenyatta won her 4 prior starts. Talk about dissappointing. The feeling before each one of those races was is this the day Zen get beat by a bunch of horses that are no better then 40k claimers in NY.

I never said that Zenyatta's 4 wins before the BC were spectacular. But there were reasons why she didn't win by huge margins. First of all, she seems to pretty much just do what she needs to do. She runs to her competition. She pretty much just toys with them. And in the race she won by a nose, that was simply jockey error. Mike Smith rode her too confidently and gave her too much to do.

In addition, some of her races were actually much better than they appear. For example, take her win on May 23rd in the Milady. Watch that race. The race doesn’t look that good on paper and it doesn’t even look that good on video if you don't watch it carefully. But it was actually an incredible performance. Garret Gomez was on Life Is Sweet in the race. He knew that Zenyatta was the horse to beat so Gomez had Life Is Sweet off the rail going down the backstretch to try to force Zenyatta to go inside. It worked. Zenyatta went inside and then Gomez let Life Is Sweet go and Zenyatta was forced to check. So Zenyatta checks going into the far turn and after she checks, she is about 10 lengths back.

Anyway, by the time they hit the stretch, she basically had the lead. She didn’t quite have the lead because she went really wide but she was within a length or so of the lead. If she didn’t go so wide she would have had the lead at the top of the stretch. So she basically made up 10 lengths around the turn. It was unbelievable. Considering that she is a big, lumbering horse, I would have never thought that she could accelerate that quickly. It was amazing. Mike Smith totally mis-timed his move. When you make a premature, wide move like that and gun the horse around the turn, your horse will totally flatten out in the stretch. If the finish line was at the 1/8th pole, that wouldn’t be a bad move. But since the finish line is not at the 1/8th pole, it is a big mistake for a rider to time a wide move as if the finish-line is at the 1/8th pole. The horse will have nothing left for the final 1/8th of a mile. This is especially true if the move is a wide move. A premature move on the rail is not nearly as costly as a premature wide move.

Anyway, her winning margin would have been much bigger that day if she didn’t check going into the turn and then make that totally premature wide move. It was actually a pretty amazing performance on her part. By the way, you can’t really blame Mike Smith for making that move because he knew that Life Is Sweet was the horse to beat and he wanted to get the jump on her.