A Saratoga wrap up, best and worst

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by oracle80

Well no, it wasn't worse than Milwaukee. Kent made one stupid mistake in that race. Gomez made 14 or 15 in his ride on Milwaukee. Rupert has an agenda, so dont listen to him so far as GG(you can listen to him on everything else), he has the audacity to say she had no run when clear!! LOL!!!! Well geez, after steadying and being choked 14 or 15 times for 11 panels of a 12 panel race, horses tend not to fire so hot the last 1/8th.

I don't think Desormeaux made a mistake at all. I would take back every time going into the clubhouse turn rather than fight it out head and head on the lead.

With regard to Milwaukee, the horse had a ton of traffic trouble that day. There is no doubt about that. Come-from-behinders get into traffic trouble sometimes. There is no way to avoid it. Gomez drops further back than a lot of the other jockeys. The strategy obviously works well. Look at his win percentage. If you come from dead-last, you can either circle the field and go five-wide or you can try to save ground. If you try to save ground, you will get into trouble sometimes. So Gomez will probably get into a little more trouble than jockeys who won't drop that far back, but so what? It's a winning strategy overall. Who cares if he gets into trouble and blows a race once in while. He makes up for it by winning 4 other races that the other jockeys would have never won on the same horse. It's like complaining about a home-run hitter who struck out 50 times. If he has 40 home-runs and you compare him to a guy with 20 home-runs and 40 strike-outs, I'd rather strike out a few more times if I could hit an extra 20 home-runs.

With regards to Milwaukee, I know Oracle will disagree but I think she was really rank that day. A jockey is going to have no choice but to continuously check if his horse is rank in trafffic.