Kentucky Derby takeaways that matter, yeah we got that. Early Preakness thoughts, yeah we got that, things nobody else is talking about, yeah that too. How about some of the best handicapping takes in the game, well you know we got that.
Here is the Javier Castellano video that Jon talks about on the show
As always thank you for watching Past the Wire TV!
If you want The Preakness horses by the Thorograph numbers and patterns, well you know what to do!
To my eyes the most important Derby takeaway is the fact that for two straight years the high prep race point earners ran flat in the race….and if you don’t agree with that, you have to recognize anyway that some horses with low point totals ran past them down the lane. Rich Strike….really? I do think that the point system is a good way to keep the field at a high quality. What I’m saying is that we need to start handicapping upside down: if a horse is wound up for the Derby through running in multiple points races they are very liable to be running flat in the big dance.
And if you don’t agree with that, what explains Todd Pletcher’s record of three winners from about sixty-five entries in the Derby? I used to throw out his Derby horses if I felt that they had been cranked too much in the lead up preps. And I was right 95% of the time. It’s a factor that really doesn’t show up in speed numbers….Thorograph’s or anyone else’s.
As for Saffie Joseph, I always put him in the same category as Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis. You had to bet them because they knew how to turn a horse around. And remember that there were hundreds of people buying products from Seth Fishman (do I have that criminal’s name right?) But bear in mind that the Feds did not catch the first two through positive drug tests because you can’t detect blood doping or SGF1000. And if you think I’m just sounding off, I can get affadavits from a half dozen friends that I spotted guys like this two years before they were stupid enough to get wiretapped and keep their big mouths yapping. And there was no surprise to me that Baffert killed five horses in his barn, several years ago, overdosing them with thyroid drugs to increase their metabolism. He’d try anything even if he didn’t know what it would do. How else do you get ahead of the crowd?