Juvenile Favorites Draw Well

- I'm going to be on The Sports Conference Call tomorrow night. Walter put me up to it. It should be fun, except that it originates from Las Vegas, so it's from 11 - 1 AM New Jersey time, so I only committed for the first hour. We'll have to see after that. Anyway, you can listen live if you sign up and call in, but you may prefer, if you're interested of course, listening to the MP3 playback the next day.

I leave for Monmouth tomorrow morning as early as I can get up and go. The re-opening of the track for workouts at 8:30 seems doubtful at best....but the media luncheon at noon is a lock.

Some of the horses I liked the most have taken hits in the last 36 hours or so, especially in the Juvenile. Tale of Ekati had his too fast half mile workout (which I discussed at the BC site), and didn't draw great with the ten post. Salute the Sarge drew the 12, yuck. Wicked Style has the 13, but I guess he's used to that. In the Juvie Fillies, A to the Croft got the 14, oh man.

Worse yet, the speedy favorites in each of the two-year old races, who I want to oppose, drew excellent inside posts. War Pass (5-2) has the two hole; Indian Blessing (3-1), the four. The latter got rave reviews for her five furlong workout the other day, (but hell, what Baffert horse doesn't work lights out in the morning?). And admittedly, there are no other obvious speedballs in either race - even Wicked Style is really a stalker at heart, I think. Nonetheless, I'm going to stick to principles here. For one thing, you never know who's going to go flash high speed in rich races like this, especially with young horses stretching out. More importantly, with these two likely favorites trying two turns for the first time in large, talented fields like this, they're automatic bet-againsts in my opinion; and I'm not going to lose any sleep nor confidence if they win (though it may cost me a little money).