Mockery of Sport?
 

first of all I love horseracing, and I love a good underdog, however I am afraid MTB winning may have made a mockery of the sport and the derby for many.The horse with the slowest of any type of speed figure, with the worst perceived "class", getting his ass beat at Sunland, with a trainer who was 1 for 32 for the year. And not only winning but destroying 18 other of the best of the best available. so poorly looked at breeding and conformation wise that he sold for $9500? Believe me I have owned and raced mostly claiming thoroughbreds for 30 years and I love the idea of this guy beating the heavy head millionaires but I think this will be one of the most single telling events to destroy the handle of racing for years to come.

lol

no way man. it's not a mockery at all. and i doubt it'll affect handle either. sometimes a long shot wins-no one quit going to oaklawn this year when flat out won, or when win willy won either.

hmm. say when win willy won three times fast. :D

As far as the speed figures, I gotta think Beyer & his followers would have been a lot more content had Summer Bird been the bomb that won.

i'd have been more content too ;)

why? beyer's been around this sport longer than a lot of folks have been alive. he knows the occasional bomb comes in, and he knows that sometimes horses run an inexplicable figure that doesn't jibe with anything they've done before-or what they do after.

it's not the end of the world that another 50-1'er won this thing.

Mockery? It's horse racing! Anything can and will happen.

exactly. i doubt giacomo winning a few years back killed the sport or reduced handle.

His life's work is based on these numbers. He talked about the last out Beyer as a strong predictor of performance in the Derby the day before the race. Don't you think he would have been happier with a Summer Bird victory? I'm not bashing him, but let's get real.

seeing as how he picked IWR, i'd think he would be happier had the horse not scratched.

most folks went with previous mud experience and bet the farm on FF. that wasn't based on beyers.
if beyers don't correlate from one surface to another, then i'd imagine they aren't gospel when going from a fast track to a sloppy one.

OK, if you say so.

besides that, most years he would be right-beyers do point out the winner. don't people usually criticize beyer for not picking the horse with the highest beyer going in to be the winner, and more often then not, that horse wins the race? not the horse he ends up choosing?

didn't they? everyone was laying on FF, saying how he had won in the slop at fairgrounds...they completely discounted the layoff, the lack of a longer race, and went just by the surface with him.

i doubt beyer gets hysterical and throws out all his stuff and retires. bombs come in, it happens. it happened yesterday, big deal.

While I didn't bet Giacomo, one can make a strong case he should've never been 50-1 and realistically was more of a 20-1 shot. Mine that Bird had the look of a 200-1 shot. HUge differemce.

Most people that bet yesterday didn't have a clue enough to read the form & even figure out that FF had won in the slop before.

perhaps. but many of them also may have bet him because larry jones was 'due'.
but i know a lot of the folks on here kept bringing up friesan fire. i also know that everyone who knows me was asking about my pick for the race. so, i would assume that many who went to the track also asked regular race fans they know about picks-i'd imagine the word got out on the jones colt.

To say that "most folks went with previous mud experience and bet the farm on FF" is just not right. And Beyer definitely would have looked better if Summer Bird had been the bomb that won...at least he acknowledged that it was possible for SB to get into the super.

FF went off the favorite. he achieved favoritism as soon as the skies opened up, before i want revenge scratched. all i read on here, and heard on t.v., was about his ability to win on the slop. but it's not right? how else explain why so many bet him? not one other horse was pointed out that i know of as being a known mudder.

Will you sign for me? ;)

Beyer makes the figures, not everyone else....and he said the day before the race that last out Beyer's were historically a great indicator of performance in the Derby. That's what I'm saying. At least Summer Bird had a good last out Beyer. What is so hard to understand? It's not a bash, just an observation.