Day 8 In Progress

Race 4--  Not too keen on the fave dueling...however, no excuse for sorry performance. Winning trainer Alexander claimed him.

We totally & completely missed this race analysis, however, we're glad to lose-- this horse carried the most contestant votes today. If the next two races cooperate, today'll be an elimination bloodbath. Of course, we're sitting very vulnerable as well-- we don't have anything near the top 3/4 consensus choices in the next two races. So it's either us + likely only a scant few others, & at a price, or most of the rest that will be advancing today.

 

Race 6-- Our hopes here ride on Fragoso aboard a turf debuter-- we're encouraged he started off the day with a good winning ride.

Okie, dokie-- in like Flynn @ 12-1...& we got the favorite, third-favorite & Bravo on the fourth-favorite off the board!

Firstly, we totally disregarded the 2nd-favorite & actual winner-- due to both the layoff & departure from Pletcher's barn. Secondly, our hero suffered a ton of traffic problems-- to the point we thought the race was lost. Fragoso did a heckuva job breaking alertly & securing the rail w/o pushing the horse unduly. But from there he endured slow horses in front of him & getting pinned against the rail by those to his immediate right...losing ground and position late backstretch, turn & early stretch.

The first three horses here were much the best, the others will need to improve significantly.

 

Race 8-- we've audibled here to the 4, primarily because of the inferior turn time of the 5. And we root for 2, 6, & 9(especially whichever one of them goes off favored)to finish off the board & complete today's elimination bloodbath. BTW the 15-1 ML 5 that we audibled off is vying for favoritism here, while the actual ML favorite 9 is at double-digit odds & longest shot of the board. 10 is now vying for favoritism after Brad Thomas touted it on his race analysis broadcast.

Mission accomplished + all three others off the board!!! The latter wasn't that likely, as the race had scratched down to 8 entrants. Our hero had shown a huge fig improvement in his 2nd both off the layoff & as 3yo...that day was a speedfest: he was the ONLY non-wire to wire winner, putting up something like 11 & 3 closing furlongs. Today he was not able to either secure the inside or close stalking trip like we hoped-- he was last or next-to last early & had to take the overland route to win. What allowed our hero to win was the patient & confident ride from his jockey: he was laying next to last early(the two trailers well in back of the rest), then the trailer(& eventual place horse / loser of the photo) made his move, and but our jock just let him by...& only moved later at his pleasure-- coming widest of all to win the photo. Of note, the 5 that we audibled off came in third, actually sticking his head in front mid-stretch before succumbing to the top two.

We're gonna take a wild guesstimate-- as many as one thousand were eliminated today, narrowing the field down to some 1-2-3 hundred.