One of the greatest 11.25 length defeats by a filly in history

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS

Instead of opting to concede an easy lead to Rachel Alexandra - which Borel tried to force him to do by floating him out - Johnny V. - no doubt following instructions - decided to go on a suicide mission with Life At Ten. Those two quickly opened up 15 lengths on the rest of the field.







I just wish I had the tools to make pace figures for the half mile instead of the first six furlong - because the pace figures probably would have been in the 130's... and that doesn't even account for the ground loss on the first turn.

Life At Ten's four races this year coming into today look like this...



I realize she won a Grade 1 race by dueling Unrivelled Belle into sound defeat - I realized she toyed with the field and easily won the $750,000 Del Cap at 10 furlongs last time out ... but make no mistake, her performance today - finishing 3rd and beaten only 11.25 lengths by Persistantly while running a Beyer in the low 70's was without a doubt her single best race this year all things considered.

She stepped up and ran huge today.

Let's just pretend that this race was a match-race between Rachel and Life and Ten. Rachel would have obviously been the favorite. But what would the over/under have been in terms of margin of victory by Rachel? It would have been somewhere around 4 lengths or maybe 5 lengths at the absolute most. Life and ten ended up getting beat by Rachel by 10 lengths. So how can you act like Life at Ten ran well? How can you like act like she outperformed expectations? She totally underperformed.

If it would have been a match-race, we would have known that these two fillies would pretty much go head and head. If I would have offered you Life at Ten plus 9 lengths, I'm sure you would have taken that bet in a second. And you would have been extremely disappointed with her performance just like everybody else would have been, myself included. I don't know how you can act like she ran well when Rachel beat her by 10 lengths. Life at Ten totally underperformed expecations and it's not as if anything unexpected happened. If it would have been a match-race, the race would have probably unfolded pretty much identical to the way it happened on Sunday.