Change of Plans for Lava Man

Originally Posted by Gander

Repent- I respect your your opiniion and have enjoyed numerous back and forths with you both in agreement and in disagreement.

1) Relaxed Gesture a fast horse? How do you define fast and maybe if you are willing to throw out his last 3 races which by the way sucked. When has he ever been able to beat top competition?

2) EC and Cacique are very good horses, albeit not so great that they too dont require a lot to go their way in a race to win, as evidenced by having perfect trips in all of their wins this year. So what exactly makes them any different than the Tin Man except they are not confirmed front runners?

3) Dont quit your job, I am with you on that. I imagine both of us work in professional enviroments and make pretty decent money. Why would we want to give that up to hang around OTBs with crispy critters all day to sweat out a living? Or sit home and make bets on a computer?

Tim you have been knocking Cacique all year long and saying he needs a perfect trip is insane. hes most definitely not a frontrunner yet he wired a grade one field in the Manhattan. And before you point to the slow pace being a factor in that win, you might wanna look at the other grass races that day where the other winners came from dead last on the soggy turf course, running down pace setters who set equally slow fractions.
In his Man O War win, Cacique was trapped behind a slow pace and exploded the last 1/8th, running it in 10:4 on a turf course that was also soggy. That was the most impressive grass win by anyone in the US this year.
His losses were also stellar. In he Woodford he was boxed and trapped for most of the race. Out in Cali, he was spun 11 wide at the top of the lane on a tight turned SA turf course and got beat a neck while flying home.
No excuses in the UN yet he ran a dead game race to be an easy 2nd. And out at Arlington he conceded the slowest pace I've seen THIS YEAR and maybe EVER when the speed and firmness of the turf course are factored in.
Hes definitely been versatile, and run well at every course hes been on.
Grass racing is usally like this. Very few older grass horses rip off win after win due to the nature of grass racing being so heavily influenced by pace and trips.
The Tin Man is a great horse, an even better story, and a wonderful horse to root for. But hes only had to ship one time and in that race he caught that unbelieveable pace.
Trust me Tim, had the Tin Man had the campaign that EC and Cacvique have had, having to run at different courses and turf conditions in differently paced race in exclusively grade one races, his record would also show blemishes.
EC and cacique have competed in NOTHING but grade one races all year long, and if you don't think that makes the road to victories much harder, then I don't know what the point of the argument is.