What was up with Quality Road's braid beed?
 

Why does a horse need its hair braided - to look pretty or something?

Who knows if it distracted him at all - but a big plastic bead from his braid was slapping him in the right eye the entire stretch run.

Watch the stretch head on. He's twirling his left front. That's what he starts doing when he 2 turns away from the Gulf Street. He needs pavement.

It's fitting that the first responder is someone with experience when it comes to having beads in their eye.

I guess there is difference between plastic beads and liquid beads - but hey, whatever.

Instead of making fun of you for starting a thread like this, I told you why he gets beat in this situation.

I give you credit for having a good eye to have noticed this. I didn't notice it the first time but after reading your post I watched it again and it is clear that it was slapping him in the face and possibly in the eye.

Too funny, Scuds


Have a feeling RA's gunna need some pavement in that next start too…

Zenyatta

He needs his forelock braided so he doesn't look like this.



and that might be a good excuse for not winning the race. There just has to be an excuse.... please?

I'm not saying it's an excuse ... I'm simply pointing out that it came free at some point - either during the race or when Haynefield charged the gate - and a big bead - larger than a marble - repeatedly kept slapping him in the right eye.

Would it be distracting for a human if a big bead kept slapping them in the eye while they were trying to run? I would think so. For a horse? How would I know.

I thought Johnny V. was to focused on looking around for Blame rather run his race. Continual looking underneath both arms starting into the far turn and continuing into deep stretch. He caught Blame around the turn on the inside with his first glance back, looked back inside mid stretch, and Blame had positioned himself to the outside for his run. Blame comes to him quickly and Johnny reacts way to late and is only able to whip QR at the base of the neck in tight. Is QR better??? or is Johnny V. to Blame?

Scat Out (Beat reporter for trying find out how QR lost?)

You're either like 15 or 80 - which is it?

You win the prize for the fastest reply to the Scat post!!!! Seriously you want to know my age? That Dude is a little strange...ah-keh...


Scat

How about giving the horse a little haircut instead?

Maybe it was a *Samson* superstition?!:)

Stop it. QR quit and Blame didn't. Simple as that.

What about the race Musket Man ran?

He was really taken out of his game - and rushed the whole way - had to race wider on both turns than QR did and still managed to finish as well as a perfect trip QR.

Before looking at any figures - I was befuddled by how well MM ran. If Haynesfield and QR hook up early in a pace battle .. and Musket Man is in the garden spot a few lengths off of it with first run on Blame .. than it's he and Blame who are in a thriller and QR winds up a very soundly beaten 3rd.

Instead - Quality Road ended up with the candy trip - and Musket Man, a horse who doesn't have a ton of natural speed is having his ears ridden off while two paths wider through the first turn, just to put whatever kind of minimal early pressure on QR that he could ... cause Ramon Dominguez opted to apply none on Haynesfield.

QR was clearly 3rd best today IMO.

A closer inspection reveals it was a tiny, but very heavy weight.

It's amazing that Velazquez didn't say anything about the braid bead in the post race ...

While you were looking every which way but straight ahead .. your horse was getting slapped in the eye over and over by a plastic rock while going almost 40MPH.

Didn't bother him in the Met