How a horse improves by 20+ lengths in a month...

[The Indomitable DrugS]

I know of only two such ways.

#1.) The Shifty Sheik way. This involves a trainer change to a trainer who has great juice.



Notice trainer Oscar Berrera claims the horse on Aug 19th and less than a month later he gets said horse to just miss against Horse of the Year Slew O' Gold in the Woodward after winning 3 straight races - all with a week or less of rest between starts.

#2.) The Devil May Care way. This involves everything in the world thats humanly possible going against a horse in a race like it did in her 64 Beyer double digit loss to dog biscuit closer Jody Slew in the Silverbulletday.

Exactly one month later - she returned to slay the mighty Amen Hallelujha and did so in faster time than the Florida Derby even though she was anything but professional in the stretch.

I did deep post position research on every winter track in the country and concluded that - without question - Fairgrounds route races had the only compelling post bias of any track in the country.

Post position #1 has won 62 of 265 FG dirt routes this meet. That's 23.4% wins. Post positions 8 and out are a combined 66 for 907.

According to post stats, in theory, FG is the only winter track in the country where you get truly punished for racing wide and truly rewarded for riding the rail.

Devil May Care was 5 wide on the first turn and 3 wide on the 2nd turn chasing a pace set by a horse breaking from post #1 that surprisingly earned an absolutely blistering fast pace figure.

One thing turned me off in a big way about DMC's performance. She finished 13 lengths behind the horse who set the too fast to believe pace. Albeit the pacesetter had far superior tactical position.

I concluded that DMC's race was a total throwout and drew a line through it. Her last true running line was an unimpressive 89 Beyer Grade 1 win in career start #2. I basically concluded that due to healthy progression from age 2 to 3 she was going to beat the overhyped Christine Daae but had no chance of improving 20+ lengths off her last race to beat Amen.

Looking at DMC's sneaky good performance at FG where she ran a 106 pace fig for 6fs despite going 5w, 3w before finishing up with a 64 final figure .. her final figure improved over 20 lengths next out but when all factors are baked in I'm not so sure how much she really improved.

I don't buy any of Pletcher's nonsense that her poor performance at FG was the result of her acting up in the gate.