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Sunday, April 22, 2007

Sunday Night Notes - April 22

- Circular Quay and Rags to Riches hooked up again, working in company on Sunday morning, and CLOCKER-1 has the outcome, which was pretty similar to last time.

- The fractional times at Keeneland were all over the place in the routes on Sunday. Three-year old maiden fillies went to the half in 47.82, while older filly and mare allowance horses went 53.14 a few races later! And, despite that pace (or maybe because of it) Biancone's Flow Chart, never far back in last, was able to outsprint the field home in a final three-eighths of 35 3/5, to win her U.S. debut off a 6 1/2 month layoff, ho hum. Biancone also won with Lady in Venice, returning off an even longer layoff of eight months. She was raring to go when they broke from the gate, but Leparoux got her to settle before commencing an extremely wide move to a very easy win, getting the last eighth in 11.53. These were two of four winners I picked for the Special in Sunday's column, which didn't get posted for some reason. Oh man...

All in all, closers still fared quite well overall, and the kickback was definitely still there.

Two winners for Darley on Sunday. Say You Will graduated in the second with a powerful move to take over heading into the stretch. By AP Indy, she's out of a stakes winning daughter of Seeking the Gold who's a half-sister to Lammtarra. That Godolphin-owned son of Nijinsky won the Epsom Derby in his second start, and off a layoff of over 300 days; and then added the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth and the Arc. With breeding like that, you probably won't be surprised that she was another of my picks in her first try around two turns. I actually cashed an exacta ticket in real life too.

2 Comments:

Harl said...

Just returned from my two-day Keeneland visit where I experienced a rather up-and-down day. I focused my attention on what I thought were a couple of early pick 4s on Saturday and Sunday that could produce a big score. I ended up hitting seven of eight with the lone loss coming on Saturday when one of my selections was nosed at the wire in the third leg. I had the Sunday early pick 4 two and a half times, but I would have rather had it once with the #9 horse winning the fourth leg. I keyed Biancone's LADY OF VENICE on all of my tickets and was alive to seven horses in the finale.

Despite that, I gave some money back in the Lexington, where I backed JOE GOT EVEN. It was a profitable weekend, but it could have been much better had one of the Matz second time starters won on Sunday.

Anonymous said...

Loved the clocker's comments about CQ getting "pissed" at his female tag-along.

I was a bit perplexed by his comments on Scat Daddy - "what you'd expect out of a closer". I know there is some reason to think if Scat Daddy as a closer (FOY, in particular) - but I don't see how someone can say that after the Florida Derby. He took the lead at the top of the stretch after being in a good stalking position no more than 2 lengths back for the duration. And this from a very respectable pace.

Maybe coming from 2 lengths counts as being a closer on the pavement that is Gulfstream, but he certainly doesn't need a race to fall apart to win it.