Declan's Moon...Turf on Thursday

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Indian Charlie

It doesn't help that his trainer is incompetent.

Why would you say that? He consistently has one of the highest win percentages of any trainer. Win percentage is certainly not the only metric to use when evaluating a trainer's ability, but I don't think there are too many incompetent trainers out there with really high win percentages.

Ellis' win percentages is slightly lower than normal this year, but that's only because he has an unusually high number of 2nd place finishes this year. He is at 17% this year. He has 15 wins from 90 starts but he has run second about 23 or 24 times. His win percentage was 29% in 2006 and it was 19% in 2007. He can't be too incompetent with numbers like that.

In addition, look at the way he moves horses up off the claim. He does it very consistently. The one I can think of most recently is the one that ran on Saturday. The horse's name is Quick Enough. He claimed that horse off Carla Gaines for $25,000 back in December. He got the horse to win a starter allowance race, then a $54,000 nwx1 state bred allowance race, and then a $52,000 nwx1 open allowance race. They paid $25,000 for the horse 6 months ago. He's already made $90,000 and his value has gone up by 3x. Those owners have made about 6x their money.