Belmont Fractions
 

Anyone else questioning the fractions for the Belmont? Based on the times listed in the chart Mine that Bird went from the mile to the mile and a quarter point in about 22.92. I find that hard to believe and if it is the case it was one of the all time butcher riding jobs by Borel.

Even if the times are wrong it was still a butcher job by Borel.

No doubt, I'm just trying to establish if it was in all time worst ride category. If those fractions are true then Mine the Bird is one hell of a horse.

What is amazing to me is that all anyone talked about was how closers can't make a premature move, yet the jockies on the favorite repeat the mistake every year.

It was obviously premature.

I don't think quite as bad as what we the viewer will see first watching...
Borel thought he had more horse and was overconfident, and he also had to consider not only riding to measure Dunkirk, but any other rivals.

I think he should have been a clear 2nd here. There was no reason to let Dunkirk beat him. I don't think he would have beaten Summer Bird.

Borel said the horse was overeager, and he had to make the choice to throttle him back and fight him or let him cruise a little up the backstretch, he chose cruise.

The trainer said, "Yup, that's what the horse has done in the past unsuccessfully" and "that's racing, Calvin did a great job".

The horse was rank and the track was lightning fast.

I know how the ride looked, and naked it looked like a poor ride, but I didn't have a big problem with it at all knowing the horse.

It's not like he could have strangulated the horse down for 11 furlongs and let him go and got this big burst. The grinders in the race were Summer Bird and Chocolate Candy.

Mine That Bird was up close to a wicked fast pace at Sunland and loafed home. He's no grinder. He's a horse who has a ton of early speed - but won't finish when you use it - or has no early speed at all for a half mile and will take off.

In his two good races .. both at shorter distances ... he got a ton of pace to work with and had horses stopping in front of him.

Do you believe everything anyone says?

right it was a question of finesse. Borel wasn't going wild asking for run, he just let way too much horse out. He made a comment that they were going too slow up front approaching the stretch so he had to let 'em go

No, but I was watching the race, and saw it happening (Durkin didn't). Go watch the replay.

The thing was they weren't going too slow. Borel completely misjudged the pace and made one of the worst premature moves of all time. If he waits he blows away Summer Bird.

I have a problem with it. I don't care what the situation is. In almost all cases a move like this just doesn't work. There's always at least one horse that catches a break and gets a breather, not running when the others are, and is able to come on and last move those that ran before it. Happens daily in races all over the country, on all the different surfaces. You run too soon, you run out of gas sooner. Try this sometime. Get out there on a bike or in running shoes. Once you experience it first hand, you'll finally understand. Jocks keep doing this **** because it doesn't cost them anything.

I hear ya.

Good luck finding a jockey who would have been able to ride him that way.

They'd have looked like Jose Santos when he would occasionally rate turf horses into submission with his head bobbing and the horse visually looking like he's being steadied and strangled into submission.

Don't worry, I've watched it. I also saw the trainer make his comments and despite how you are portraying them he was not happy with the ride at all. What I saw was Luv Gov drop back into Mine that Bird's face and Calvin decided to pass him and then for some bizarre reason decided to try and pass the rest of the field like he was on Secretariat.

It's not a failure to understand anything. It's an instantaneous choice the jock has to make, strangle or fight the horse to restrain him (and use up energy) or try and finesse the eagerness a bit and let the horse roll on. I don't see Borel asking the horse, I see him sitting quiet as a mouse. I don't see where the horse could have been helped by cover, either. The problem started when the horse came out of the first turn.

The wrestling matches between jocks and horses that go on in turf races and what MTB was doing today going into the turf are about as distinct as a fat man and a skinny one.

And that (differences in interpreting previous race replays) is what makes pari-mutual gambling rewarding.

The trainer mentioned he wished Borel had kept MTB covered up on the rail. If Borel had done that, maybe he would have relaxed better.

Right, Borel either didn't see the race accurately, or was making excuses in the interview.
A "perfect" ride definitely beats Dunkirk, but I don't think it beats Summer Bird.

I don't see this. I don't have the headon but from the pan shot, I don't see the horse fighting Borel. I don't see a problem in the 1st turn. In fact, as they start to run into the 2nd turn, you see Borel let go of the reign with his left hand to change his goggles. There's no wrestling match. And, I see him urging the horse on the turn, and whipping before he enters.

It's a lot tougher to get a horse to relax and move later, than it is to "let 'em scoot on up"...

for some reason scooting up is en vouge

Gomez was screwing up a lot of races like that, (in spite of doing it well a couple times with Pioneerof the Nile)

Borel screwed up on it today.

I guess [relaxing the horse instead of scooting] is one of those subtle riding skills we don't even see on replays unless we anticipate the situations and look for that type of thing.

I think scooting up sucks - unless you have one rival up front that is posing a winning threat while getting an uncontested breather

I agree the headon would be great (and I noticed, as you did, the relaxed goggles change and hoped he'd be okay when I saw that) - the part I was worried about was before that, along the backstretch. Yes, he wasn't fighting the horse, he was letting him cruise on up.

I couldn't disagree more with this statement, I said this before the Belmont so this is not a rear view mirror comment, but MTB has one quick big burst which is better suited around tighter turning tracks, it wasn't the timing of the move as much as he couldn't sustain it, if Borel had waited Summer Bird would have still won there's no doubt who was running better in the end. I don't even think Kent D rode him particularly well but just did an OK job.

I pretty much anticipated going in that Mine That Bird would be taken back - make his one big move - and hang because of the distance and lack of pace.

Does that mean I'd have been surprised if he had run an Afleet Alex kind of race and rated into a moderate pace for far longer than I believed he was capable of rating - no.

But it's much ado about what figured to happen going in.

The same thing with Real Quiet's Belmont move ... he made an insanely pre-mature move in the Kentucky Derby .. and ran according to Moss figures the fastest mile in the last 15 or so Derby's - which includes the years Congaree and UBS were clear after a mile through scorching fractions.. and RQ still managed to win the Derby at 10fs despite absolutely walking home the final quarter mile.

Hell, Real Quiet was even like a length in front of Indian Charlie after a mile in that Derby and had him put away with that move .. and IC was one crazy fast horse.

Was that really the type of horse who was supposed to be put to sleep for 10 and a half furlongs and wait around for Victory Gallop?

Did anybody else notice that Durkin called MTB in the wrong position?

Heading into the final turn, Durkin calls him as second to last, 7 lengths from the lead - but at that point the horse had already moved up during the previous two furlongs and was right up on the outside, 3-4 wide just a few lengths back and 5th or so at that point. I think he miscalled another horse as MTB.

Durkin? Sorry if this has already been mentioned but I am just catching up with all the posts today but did anyone catch the comment Jerry Bailey made before the race that had Borel rode MTB in the Preak and not Mike Smith, he would have won. Amazing frankness on Bailey's part citing Smith using the 4 path for much of the race and Borel would have used the rail.

i don't have a problem with the route borel chose but i hollered "to soon", as soon as MTB started to pick off horses.
i remember seeing a piece a couple years ago with jocks explaining strategies of this race. one thing they All agreed on, the common mistake was making a move or turning the horse loose to soon.

I thought that a bit silly - drawing a horse in blank places during a previous race and assuming it would have won?

But I was too shocked that ESPN-ABC chose to open the broadcast with a list of horses that never ran again after the Belmont and were retired, because the race is too taxing.

Hey, thanks for feeding right into the animal rights bozo mindset about how destructive racing is to it's stars, ESPN. Nice job. Gag.

And really a dumb comment from Jerry Bailey too.
Smith saved ground around the first turn in the preakness. There wasn't room inside on the 2nd turn in the Preakness.

I never thought I would say this but I found myself missing Jim Mackay & Charlsie Cantey in the telecasts. On the Bailey comment, I wonder what Smith thought of it, he later tried to make ammends by saying Mike is a great rider, but that was obviously a little PR control. Everyone who knows racing knows Mike is ok but certainly not a great rider.

My only problem with Mike's ride was he had to check/steady MTB at the top of the stretch causing him to lose abit of MO. Other than that speculating on a rider using the rail and winning is abit of a stretch but I can understand the argument, basically he was saying Borel would have saved ground and the result would have been alot closer, saying he would have won was abit over the top.

Maybe he cost himself second losing the photo, but he wasn't running down Summer Bird today. He was much the best. He was checked/steadied 5-6 times down the backstretch, shuffled back to 9th, yet still rerallied to win. Horses rarely win with that kind of trip.

You can say numerically the pace was fast but the fact is the frontrunners never came back (they ran a close 2nd and a close 4th) so he had to make a decision and he went for it when he did. The ride wasn't terrible.

I agree with that.

The problem with putting blame on Mike Smith for getting to the rail was that Flying Private moved with him and took that path. There just wasn't room for 2 on the route that Flying Private took.

i finally watched the race this evening after getting back from dinner and a movie (land of the lost, don't waste your time and money).
when i saw borel make his move i told my husband it was too soon. jocks ride this track like every other, but belmont is like no other in that you still have a quarter mile to go at that point.
borel rode the best horse in his mind, and i'm sure he thought the horse would duplicate his derby run, and fly by and win easy. so much for that thinking.

i wonder tho if now darley will be trying to buy birdstone.

well, that kind of trip kept him from running a sub 23 second 5th quarter. Which when you're 5 1/2 back at the mile mark run in 1:37.86 mile to leading at 2:01.66 is running a sub 23 second 5th quarter. I'm guessing horses rarely win with that kind of trip either in a 12f race. when you go sub 23 5th quarter...I agree, you ain't running anyone down. There ain't anyone left to run down...only get run over.

If I had to rate Borel's rides for this triple crown and give it an overall grade, I would give him an A. Infact I can't think of another rider that rode this triple crown better than him, his ride was still better than Kent D's today and he lost the race.

If your talking about the computer simulation of the Preakness about 10 minutes before the Belmont on ABC where they broke down each step of the Preakness in 3D. I thought it was more about the path taken as in rail trip (ala Borel) vs the weave Smith used. When you corrected the equation for momentum gained and lost. A rail trip would have beaten Rachel using the race she ran, Of course there is no way to know if Rachael had even a little more juice that would have allowed her to hang on. I just watched again on TiVo in the hotel here and thought this technology made Trakus look like the original electric football board games from the 70's you turned on like a light switch when you were a kid. You have to see it again it was actually pretty cool

This is well stated. The best horse today won the Belmont. IMO MTB did precisely what I thought he'd do: run out of gas the final eighth.

So do you not believe the fractions? If Mine that Bird really ran sub 23 from a mile to a mile and a quarter then that was amazing. You have to either acknowledge that or say the fractions are wrong. You're too intelligent to just sit there and pretend you don't know.

I hope that we can enjoy Mine That Bird for years to come at a top level. He seems like a consistent horse that will regularly finish in the money if not win in G1 races for the rest of his career.