I agree completely about Warrior's Reward's performance.

I think it is dangerous to legitimize Eskendereya's performance off the Excelsior. I thought that was an ugly race where the winner gutted a win out at a distance that is probably farther than his best (nor was it the best distance for More Than a Reason or Nite Light for that matter). I don't think any of those horses produced their "A" effort, so to say that Goldsville's figure is legit because he ran a comparable figure in his prior race is a mistake, in my opinion.

The funny thing is that the Excelsior provided an absolutely perfect backdrop to make the Wood figure. It couldn't have made the number easier to make, accept, and understand.

I thought Eskenderya's Wood was slow early, fast late; the Excelsior was just plain slow. I agree that the Excelsior provides a perfect backdrop for a figure maker to say that Eskenderaya ran "x" points faster than Goldsville. It does not answer whether the figure for both races is too high (to the extent that final times were influenced by the pace in the respective races).

" You thought ".....while a highly respected figuremaker, CMOrioles, says differently.

I apologize if this seems nasty, but sorry if I don't respect his thoughts more than yours. Appearances can be very deceiving in this game.

Why don't you take a moment to comment about what appeared to be an inside bias for some of these races on Saturday. Don't you think that the fact that more than a few horses made significant inside gains is relevant to the discussion? Especially in the Excelsior, where More Than A Reason looks like he's going to run them down midstretch, only to hit a wall, and Nite Light can't keep up early/mid stretch, then 'surges' late for 2nd. I think more than the pace affected what happened in the Excelsior.

One thing to consider is if the pace was "crawling" as some say, drawing off to win by 9 is even more impressive. Crawling paces produce tighter finishes, not romps, most of the time.

And that crawling pace in the Excel produced just that.

BINGO. (Well, relatively)

I agree completely. That's why I went out of my way to say that Eskendereya's performance was particularly impressive. I haven't questioned his performance; only the figure.

A bunch of evenly matched horses with similar running styles do that as well. One thing I am certain is that the Excelsior was not a crawl for the horses entered. It was a very even race.

So how would you describe the pace of those two races relative to the class of the horses involved: slow, average or fast?

I defer to people like CMOrioles who make pace figures.

Nice dodge.

I wouldn't have thought that you'd need to rely on a figure maker to have an opinion of the dynamics of a race.

Nice dodge?

I apologize for answering your question.

The slower you think the pace was - the more impressive you have to think Eskenderya's race was. You don't win like that over halfway respectable opposition when the pace is a true crawl.

The slower you think the pace was - the more you can entertain the idea that a likely much faster pace in the Derby will have a likely negative impact on the horse because he will have to work a lot harder early or get his face real dirty for a change in mid-pack under a wide-trip loving jockey.

They wash each other out for me.

Eskenderya is obviously the most likely winner - but I'm not a big fan. I think both Quality Road and I Want Revenge were probably better horses at this time. Esk is also from the barn of a trainer who's suspiciously on fire and not very easy to root for.

I'm a much bigger fan of Eightyfiveinafifty and Sidney's Candy as horses because they are much cooler.

If nothing changes with the way they're made - I think 15 years from now Sidney's Candy will still probably have the fastest Beyer of any 2-year-old in the history of Del Mar synthetic. It such a mind-bogglingly wide margin lead he has now.

And when you think 2yo's running huge going 5.5f .. you normally think of a speed and precious pedigree and a 2yo sprint trainer. Sidney's Candy is the total polar opposite of all that. Sire who ran a 123 Beyer going 10fs. Late developing 2nd dam who was a Graded Stakes winner at 12 furlongs and was nothing if not tough and loaded with stamina. A trainer who's numbers are mind-bogglingly better with route horses than sprinters year after year on all 3 different surfaces. That's a real unique horse to me.

It's pretty obvious that Eightyfiveinafifty is the coolest horse in this crop though. As a fan ... I will be pretty happy if Eskenderya gets beat.

Not really

signed,

Sydney's Candy

On the one hand we (FINALLY) have most of the intelligencia, even you, admitting that Beyers aren't very good on synthetics. On the other hand, we continue to rate horses (historically) based on Beyer #'s. Certainly even you can notice the disjointedness here.

Well, you point out one, and to be honest that pace wasn't really slow for synthetics either...just average. I did say usually in any case.