Nothing Settled

Today's action included the Blue Grass Stakes from Keeneland and the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn.

In the Blue Grass, run on the all-weather polytrack, 8/1 Dominican (Rafael Bejarano) closed into a totally lifeless pace to prevail by a nose over EVEN money favorite, Street Sense (Calvin Borel). This was a boat race. The opening quarter went in 26, the half in 51-2/5ths. I've seen trotters run faster. 10/1 Teuflesberg (Edgar Prado) was my pick. He led right up to the very end when there was a blanket photo finish and Teuflesberg's nose was 4th on the camera. If you can't hang on through dawdling fractions, you're not going to win roses on May 5th. Street Sense can be forgiven for his effort. Off his last grueling race, I expected some regression. Today, he had no pace to run into and he still managed to just miss by a nose. Let's see how they come out. The Keeneland polytrack is a very deep and tiring surface; so, the times are deceiving. Great Hunter 9/5 with Corey Nakatani had a legit excuse. He was shut off and had to take sharply. That cost him valuable ground and he finished 3 lenghts back in 5th.

In the Arkansas Derby, 4/5 favorite Curlin (Robby Albarado) put on quite a show winning by 10 widening lenghts--and making it seem easy. 30/1 longshot Storm In May (Juan Leyva) got a suck-up second closing from far back to just get by the tiring Deadly Dealer 2/1 with John Velasquez. Flying First Class had a jockey change to Terry Thompson and it made no difference as he finished a tiring 6th after making a menacing middle move. Another Derby hopeful, Officer Rocket 8/1 with Luis Quinonez lost all chance with a horrible beginning from which he never recovered.

So, Curlin appears to be for real. We'll see if Street Sense's dull performance was due to the slow time and tiring track.

All for now, til next time.

Racetrack Lenny