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Originally Posted by miraja2
Congaree was a very good horse on many tracks and at several distances, but I forgot until DrugS posted the PPs what an absolute monster he was when entered in one-turn races at Aqu.
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It wasn't just one turn races .. his Wood Memorial win was pretty amazing as well.
People often forget that Congaree's Wood win was both his stakes debut and just his 4th lifetime start.
The 2001 Wood Memorial was also THE ONLY two-turn dirt race on the entire card at AQU that day. That basically made it a nightmare race for figures makers.
It's bad enough to only have one race to work with .. it's worse when that one race consists of a fairly small field of developing 3-year-olds. It makes something very easy to do into a total guessing game.
In Congaree's prior start, he won an N1X alw race at SA going just 1/5th slower than the mighty Point Given went on the same card and distance.
*Congaree wins the Wood by 2.75 lengths and is given a 108 Beyer. His Beyer jumps to a 109 in the Kentucky Derby when he's the lone survivor of a vicious pace and runs a mind bogglingly good race.
* Monarchos runs 2nd beaten 2.75 lengths in the Wood and gets a 103 Beyer. In his prior start to the Wood .. he won the Florida Derby by 4.5 lengths overcoming a huge 6 wide turn move at inside friendly GP and gets a 105 Beyer despite the trip. Next out, he easily wins the KY Derby and gets a 116 Beyer after a dream pace setup.
* Richly Blendid runs 3rd beaten 10 lengths in the Wood and gets a 92 Beyer. In his previous start he won a Grade 3 stake with a 101 Beyer. In his next start after the Wood he won a Grade 3 with a 97 Beyer.
* It's So Simple runs 4th beaten 14 lengths and gets a 85. In his two prior starts to the Wood, he ran a 87 and 95. In his two starts after the Wood, he runs a 91 and 103.
* Voodoo runs 5th beaten 15 lengths and gets a 83. In his prior start he ran a 91 - in his first start after the Wood he cut-back to 6fs and ran a 108 Beyer.
* Paging ran 6th and last beaten more than 40 lengths and got a 36 Beyer. He ran a 88 in his prior start when 3rd in the Tampa Derby. He ran a 73 and 85 in his next two after the Wood.
Basically....to make a long story short... the '01 Wood figure was a VERY bad guess by a figure maker who was put in a very tricky situation. The 108 was absolutely laughable in hindsight ... it should obviously be 5 to 8 points higher. I would assume the figure maker got so conservative because Congaree was a very lightly raced horse that's stretching out to 9fs and trying stakes company for the first time. It takes real guts to slap a 115 next to a 3yo stakes debuter when you have a very shaky variant.