JC / Railbird

Man, it’s sanctimonious BS like “four-furlong, morning-glory speedballs suddenly look like the afternoon chumps they should be” that really makes me sour on a writer.
What license does Plonk have to assert that horses who can work a bullet in the morning should be chumps in the afternoon? It’s not a trainer’s license, I’ll tell you that.
There are plenty of horses capable of working bullets in the morning and then running a route of ground a few days later in the afternoon. Barbaro, Bernardini, Big Brown, and Azeri come immediately to mind, but there are countless others.
It’s just a really ignorant comment, and it makes me sick that the talent pool among turf writers is so shallow that the so-called worldwide leader in sports turns to this guy for his racing knowledge.

Posted by Jimmy X on July 17, 2008 @ 8:06 pm

Hah! Oustanding, Jimmy, truly. It’s nice to see someone out there demanding excellence.

Posted by Blinkers Off on July 17, 2008 @ 10:29 pm

Jimmy, I think you read way too much into that phrase. I don’t know Plonk, can’t ask him, but I’d guess he wasn’t referring to horses like Barbaro and Big Brown or suggesting that all horses who work bullets should be afternoon chumps. Surely, you’ve seen horses on your local weekday card who can work fast in the morning but can’t carry that speed in the afternoon, unless they catch a biased strip, a perfect trip, or a seriously sub-par field. Heck, those horses make up half the entries over the Aqueduct inner dirt …

Posted by Jessica on July 18, 2008 @ 10:20 am