Just like with most of the other juice guys, his magic doesn't work as well on grass, where horses tire less easily.

yeah, its just makes the race a WHOLE lot more interesting. just think of his legacy if he did win.......

It will be a very exciting race to watch. The fan part of me will root for him, the handicapper part of me who is struggling to be less amateurish will bet against him. I don't think he will be able to get it done. But while I appreciate the efforts by the connections, I worry about what a bad defeat will do to his confidence and ability moving forward where-ever Assman and his babe Maggi go. I assume they are inseparable now. I just hope they do the best for the horse. He deserves it, but I don't trust Assmussan or Jackson.

Being a well bred son of Hasili anything less than very good would be considered a failure.

The one thing about him that he has going for him is he's by a good turf sire Smart Strike, to me this is an experiment. To wager on him as a experiment would be a waste of time. However I'm very curious as a fan to see how he does, nothing about this horse would surprise me though.

ateam was the first of people i know to get the smart strike thing ,way back:rolleyes:

It was my only handicapping angle at the time.

Some very smart people would disagree with that.

I never said that Asmussen and Blasi were stupid.

I'm all ears if there's a legitimate explanation as to why Asmussen, Dutrow, Contessa, etc. are consistently much less effective on the grass.

I never said you said that - at all. . .

Asmussen's 17% on turf and 23% overall for the year. . . It's not like he's incapable of training a turf horse - he's probably getting a lot more dirt/speed type horses than someone like Mott or Clement and he's probably just a better dirt trainer. If you gave him a good turf horse, though, I'm sure he'd be capable of training it.

Contessa - well that's easy - first of all he's not a very good trainer - but. . . when does he have most of his success? Aqueduct Inner when there's no turf and the competition level is much lower. . . Of course he's not going to out-train Mott, Clement, etc. on turf at Belmont and Saratoga. He's a 9% turf trainer and right now he's 7% at Belmont with all starters - which is a much more telling stat than comparing his 15% for the year vs. 9% turf.

Dutrow - Whether he's juicing or not - I just think he's a very good trainer. His numbers are a little lower on turf - but he's another guy who deals with a lot of claiming types. But, he's also proven that he can train turf horses - Kip Deville. Interesting stats: At Saratoga from '05-'07: Sprints: 28% with a $2.28 ROI - Routes: 22% with a $1.38 ROI. Turf Sprints: 25% with a $2.61 ROI. My guess would be that he's not great with turf routers but I don't have that stat.

What about Frankel? He's supposed to be a "super trainer" but he wins at a slightly higher clip on turf - 19% turf but 18% overall.

I don't follow them closely but don't guys like Mullins, Lake, Catalano, and Amoss also do well on turf and move horses up on it?

The whole "juice doesn't turf" philosophy is completely obsolete at this point.

All very good points. The numbers are less disparate than I thought. I also am not saying that juicers can't train turf horses. However, I still feel like juice would generally be more effective with dirt horses. There's a reason why guys like Dutrow and Contessa are the ones consistently employed by those in the cheap claim game and not those with turf horses.

hmmm

Great call Matt. You have been on Red Rocks all week. He absolutely got the perfect set up he needed and took advantage.

Good call Hooves.

He did get a setup.
But the rest of the field did not exactly encounter
a mess after those two ran off.

Curlin had his chance.
I would like to see another go on grass though
where he actually has a chance of losing.
I wonder where this sets him up BC wise running
on the man made stuff...

nice one Matt for keeping the faith....

i was with you last time he ran this well..lol

So was the race exciting to watch? I haven't watched it yet.

;)
Twice is a charm Kevin