Over the course of the last five weeks, those of you who have actually read your Flying Pie columns have learned a lot about thoroughbred horse racing, perhaps more than you ever wanted to know. We used to think that much of what we wrote in these little epistles was lost on the army of laymen out there but a surprising number of you say it ain’t so, a statement given some modicum of credibility in the fact that last week’s Thursday readership was the greatest in the history of the column. Who knew? The boom continued in subsequent days. Thirty lost souls from Australia even logged on and we haven’t exactly been big in Australia. Irana reflected the opinions of several: “I can’t read the sports columns, they’re too dry, but it’s easy to read the horse stuff in The Flying Pie. I like the horses but even for the people who don’t, a lot of it is still funny.” Gee, Irana, we were really trying to be serious. Anyway, here are a few things we’ve learned:
1. Orb is not quite as good as we thought he was, while Oxbow is better. We still think Orb is the best of the three-year-olds. Remember, after the Kentucky Derby he had won five races in a row, including the prestigious Florida Derby and the Fountain of Youth, the latter two at tough Gulfstream Park. He was fourth in the Preakness and third in the Belmont, mounting a courageous drive he simply could not sustain. Orb was a tired horse after the taxing Triple Crown. He will be aimed for the venerable Travers Stakes in August, probably with one prep, thus giving him ample recovery time. We would expect an impressive effort in the Travers.
Going into the Triple Crown races, Oxbow gave no indication he was as good a horse as he now appears to be. His Derby race was impressive because he was the only horse who raced near the unrealistic pace and was still around at the finish, finishing sixth. His Preakness win was suspect as his clever rider was allowed to set a very slow pace and no one could catch him at the end. But in the Belmont, he sat close to a foolish pace set by Frac Daddy, who clearly did not belong in this race (and we told you so), with the unfortunate Freedom Child right on his hip. The latter is apparently one of those horses who is either going to get the lead or go down in flames, a tragic flaw in many horses. In this race, he went down in flames. Oxbow hug around for fractions of 23.11, 46.66 and 1:10.95, good sprint times, and even got the lead briefly before being headed by the eventual winner, Palace Malice. He finished a very good second, holding off the spent Orb.
2. Palace Malice is the real deal. We gave you this horse, along with Incognito, as betable longshots who would pay a bundle. Incognito finished a nice fourth, beaten a length by Orb, so maybe we should stick to selecting longshots. Palace Malice, you’ll recall, set a frantic and unsustainable pace in the Kentucky Derby, bringing down all the frontrunners. He passed on the Preakness and came in here fresh. Trainer Pletcher wisely removed the blinkers in an effort to slow him down early. It worked, as Palace Malice willingly sat fifth early, going four wide in the first turn, gradually moved up to fourth, then third and eventually taking the lead, again four wide in the final turn, winning off by 3 1/4.
Before the Belmont, Palace Malice had won one (count ‘em—ONE—race), a maiden special at Saratoga last August, though he was twice stakes-placed, once in the April 13 Bluegrass at Keeneland when he was beaten a neck by Java’s War, another classics horse. He has been erratic but he may be coming around in time to contest the three-year-old championship which is obviously up for grabs.
3. We’re pretty good at telling you who is NOT going to win. We picked Orb last time pretty much by default because we couldn’t make much of a case for anyone else. If there were only two categories in the selection process, one titled “Orb” and the other “Somebody Else,” we would have opted for the latter. Freedom Child crashed and burned and our pick for second, the filly Unlimited Budget, ran a respectable sixth. But the horses we threw out were on the money. We told you Revolutionary was suspect and couldn’t figure Golden Soul, the former finishing a disappointing fifth at 5-1, the latter a poor ninth at 12-1. The others we dismissed, Overanalyze, Vyjack, Will Take Charge, Giant Finish, Midnight Taboo, along with troublemaker Frac Daddy, finished anywhere from seventh to fourteenth. Unfortunately, nobody pays you for picking the runts of the litter.
Palace Malice Wins The Belmont
It’s A Long And A Dusty Road
….to the Triple Crown, and after watching the three races and reading your little blogs maybe you now have a better idea of why nobody wins the Triple Crown much anymore. It takes a super horse to persevere through the five-week grind, to withstand the unpredictable fragilities of pace and positioning, to face fresh horses when you are not so fresh yourself, to run three different distances on three different surfaces in rain and shine on fast tracks and muddy ones. If they ran two more of these races, you might get two more different winners, although it looks like the three winners who have emerged are the ones most likely to prevail in the Travers, the winner taking the lead for the three-year-old championship, a crown which will go unclaimed at least until November’s Breeder Cup races. Everyone cries for the lack of a Triple Crown winner, but a Triple Crown winner will emerge when some horse is deserving of the title, as were the winners of the last three, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed and that’s as it should be. We were hoping to be around, ourselves, next year until met with an unfortunate obstacle, and, alas….
There Is No Joy In Mudville
The mighty Casey has not struck out yet, but he has one big strike on him and the pitcher looks imposing. Cosmic Flash, readying for a sprint stakes at Calder on June 22nd, came up with a significant case of sesamoiditis and is on the shelf for at least three months, thus eliminating him from not only that race but also from the rich Florida Stallion Stakes series. We’ve never been especially lucky in this business but our horses usually run more than once before they have problems. Sesamoiditis exists when the sesamoid bones at the back of the fetlock joint become inflamed. The sesamoid bones act as “pulleys” for the suspensory ligament as it passes over the back of the fetlock joint. the action is similar to that of the navicular bone. Sesamoiditis is most common in athletic horses that place extreme stress on the sesamoid bones during high-speed exercise and jumping.
Treatment usually calls for laying the horse up for ten days until he is comfortable, then three weeks of light training before returning to the usual workload. In our case, Cosmic Flash has never been lame, just a little puffy around the ankle, above and below. We gave him eleven days off and he looked better. When returned to training, however, the puffiness returned. Earlier x-rays (taken before his vacation) showed a modest problem but current ultrasound images are more concerning. Could he make it to a race? Maybe. Could he win it while not at his best? Doubtful. And who knows how much damage that would do. So POOF! go the dreams of early triumphs and now the hope is that he can come back at all. Once off three months, all the early training must be repeated, all the while hoping a compromised weak spot will hold up. It is another in a long series of disappointments that are indigenous to horse people. We’ll live. We’ll live with visions of big days ahead at Gulfstream this Winter and if those days never appear, well, the visions got us to Winter and that’s the season the new yearlings turn to two-year-olds and begin to spark renewed hopes on the training tracks of Ocala. It will be Saturday mornings at the Eisaman Training Center again and you never know when Barry will do a double-take as he looks at his watch, shields it from prying eyes and signals me over. Hot damn, we’ll think, looks like we got a good one here!
Hopefully, that’s not all, folks….
1. Orb is not quite as good as we thought he was, while Oxbow is better. We still think Orb is the best of the three-year-olds. Remember, after the Kentucky Derby he had won five races in a row, including the prestigious Florida Derby and the Fountain of Youth, the latter two at tough Gulfstream Park. He was fourth in the Preakness and third in the Belmont, mounting a courageous drive he simply could not sustain. Orb was a tired horse after the taxing Triple Crown. He will be aimed for the venerable Travers Stakes in August, probably with one prep, thus giving him ample recovery time. We would expect an impressive effort in the Travers.
Going into the Triple Crown races, Oxbow gave no indication he was as good a horse as he now appears to be. His Derby race was impressive because he was the only horse who raced near the unrealistic pace and was still around at the finish, finishing sixth. His Preakness win was suspect as his clever rider was allowed to set a very slow pace and no one could catch him at the end. But in the Belmont, he sat close to a foolish pace set by Frac Daddy, who clearly did not belong in this race (and we told you so), with the unfortunate Freedom Child right on his hip. The latter is apparently one of those horses who is either going to get the lead or go down in flames, a tragic flaw in many horses. In this race, he went down in flames. Oxbow hug around for fractions of 23.11, 46.66 and 1:10.95, good sprint times, and even got the lead briefly before being headed by the eventual winner, Palace Malice. He finished a very good second, holding off the spent Orb.
2. Palace Malice is the real deal. We gave you this horse, along with Incognito, as betable longshots who would pay a bundle. Incognito finished a nice fourth, beaten a length by Orb, so maybe we should stick to selecting longshots. Palace Malice, you’ll recall, set a frantic and unsustainable pace in the Kentucky Derby, bringing down all the frontrunners. He passed on the Preakness and came in here fresh. Trainer Pletcher wisely removed the blinkers in an effort to slow him down early. It worked, as Palace Malice willingly sat fifth early, going four wide in the first turn, gradually moved up to fourth, then third and eventually taking the lead, again four wide in the final turn, winning off by 3 1/4.
Before the Belmont, Palace Malice had won one (count ‘em—ONE—race), a maiden special at Saratoga last August, though he was twice stakes-placed, once in the April 13 Bluegrass at Keeneland when he was beaten a neck by Java’s War, another classics horse. He has been erratic but he may be coming around in time to contest the three-year-old championship which is obviously up for grabs.
3. We’re pretty good at telling you who is NOT going to win. We picked Orb last time pretty much by default because we couldn’t make much of a case for anyone else. If there were only two categories in the selection process, one titled “Orb” and the other “Somebody Else,” we would have opted for the latter. Freedom Child crashed and burned and our pick for second, the filly Unlimited Budget, ran a respectable sixth. But the horses we threw out were on the money. We told you Revolutionary was suspect and couldn’t figure Golden Soul, the former finishing a disappointing fifth at 5-1, the latter a poor ninth at 12-1. The others we dismissed, Overanalyze, Vyjack, Will Take Charge, Giant Finish, Midnight Taboo, along with troublemaker Frac Daddy, finished anywhere from seventh to fourteenth. Unfortunately, nobody pays you for picking the runts of the litter.
Palace Malice Wins The Belmont
It’s A Long And A Dusty Road
….to the Triple Crown, and after watching the three races and reading your little blogs maybe you now have a better idea of why nobody wins the Triple Crown much anymore. It takes a super horse to persevere through the five-week grind, to withstand the unpredictable fragilities of pace and positioning, to face fresh horses when you are not so fresh yourself, to run three different distances on three different surfaces in rain and shine on fast tracks and muddy ones. If they ran two more of these races, you might get two more different winners, although it looks like the three winners who have emerged are the ones most likely to prevail in the Travers, the winner taking the lead for the three-year-old championship, a crown which will go unclaimed at least until November’s Breeder Cup races. Everyone cries for the lack of a Triple Crown winner, but a Triple Crown winner will emerge when some horse is deserving of the title, as were the winners of the last three, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed and that’s as it should be. We were hoping to be around, ourselves, next year until met with an unfortunate obstacle, and, alas….
There Is No Joy In Mudville
The mighty Casey has not struck out yet, but he has one big strike on him and the pitcher looks imposing. Cosmic Flash, readying for a sprint stakes at Calder on June 22nd, came up with a significant case of sesamoiditis and is on the shelf for at least three months, thus eliminating him from not only that race but also from the rich Florida Stallion Stakes series. We’ve never been especially lucky in this business but our horses usually run more than once before they have problems. Sesamoiditis exists when the sesamoid bones at the back of the fetlock joint become inflamed. The sesamoid bones act as “pulleys” for the suspensory ligament as it passes over the back of the fetlock joint. the action is similar to that of the navicular bone. Sesamoiditis is most common in athletic horses that place extreme stress on the sesamoid bones during high-speed exercise and jumping.
Treatment usually calls for laying the horse up for ten days until he is comfortable, then three weeks of light training before returning to the usual workload. In our case, Cosmic Flash has never been lame, just a little puffy around the ankle, above and below. We gave him eleven days off and he looked better. When returned to training, however, the puffiness returned. Earlier x-rays (taken before his vacation) showed a modest problem but current ultrasound images are more concerning. Could he make it to a race? Maybe. Could he win it while not at his best? Doubtful. And who knows how much damage that would do. So POOF! go the dreams of early triumphs and now the hope is that he can come back at all. Once off three months, all the early training must be repeated, all the while hoping a compromised weak spot will hold up. It is another in a long series of disappointments that are indigenous to horse people. We’ll live. We’ll live with visions of big days ahead at Gulfstream this Winter and if those days never appear, well, the visions got us to Winter and that’s the season the new yearlings turn to two-year-olds and begin to spark renewed hopes on the training tracks of Ocala. It will be Saturday mornings at the Eisaman Training Center again and you never know when Barry will do a double-take as he looks at his watch, shields it from prying eyes and signals me over. Hot damn, we’ll think, looks like we got a good one here!
Hopefully, that’s not all, folks….
