Take Control off Derby Trail
DiscreetCat
Moderator
from Bloodhorse:
Take Control, the son of Horses of the Year A.P. Indy-Azeri, will be sidelined for several months due to shin problems and will be pointed for a summer campaign, trainer Bob Baffert said Jan. 20.
Purchased at the Keeneland April 2-year-old sale for $1.9 million by Kaleem Shah, Take Control was impressive winning his career debut at Santa Anita Dec. 30, demonstrating an explosive turn of foot in the stretch despite racing very greenly.
“It’s better in the long run, because he is so immature and needs time to grow,” Baffert said. “He will be ready for summer Derbys and will be a great Travers horse. At least we know he can run. If these 3-year-olds show me one slight problem I will take them off the Derby trail quickly.”
Take Control was best known as being a $7.7 million buy back at the Keeneland September yearling sale.
Take Control, the son of Horses of the Year A.P. Indy-Azeri, will be sidelined for several months due to shin problems and will be pointed for a summer campaign, trainer Bob Baffert said Jan. 20.
Purchased at the Keeneland April 2-year-old sale for $1.9 million by Kaleem Shah, Take Control was impressive winning his career debut at Santa Anita Dec. 30, demonstrating an explosive turn of foot in the stretch despite racing very greenly.
“It’s better in the long run, because he is so immature and needs time to grow,” Baffert said. “He will be ready for summer Derbys and will be a great Travers horse. At least we know he can run. If these 3-year-olds show me one slight problem I will take them off the Derby trail quickly.”
Take Control was best known as being a $7.7 million buy back at the Keeneland September yearling sale.
Comments
They're also listing Tiz Chrome @ 15/1 to win the Derby. Nice horse, obviously, but he hasn't even attempted two turns yet. The whole thing is pretty comical, and i'm not just talking about Harrah's. The other places are just as gulity.
The good news is that they're so utterly clueless, they have a propensity to miss things. Some pretty obvious things, at times. So i guess you could say that it evens out. Basically what it boils down to is that you're restricted to betting horses were already on the sheet at large prices, and whom won't be adjusted properly. There are several of those every year. Occasionally you can get a horse added on at a decent price, but the problem with that is that you're then alerting the someone to the fact that you're interested in betting a horse before he even sets the the line, so in most cases they're going to low-ball you. Some of the prices that i've been quoted have literally almost made me bust out laughing right there at the counter. And then after you don't bet, they probably resent you for "wasting their time". Like it's my fault, lol.
Another part of the problem is the future prices that you see posted in the Racing Form (which start being published around March, i think), and are equally ridiculous. That serves to legitimize the Vegas numbers in the eyes of many people (i.e. the books themselves, and the peole who don't know any better). And wouldn't you know it, the numbers in the Racing Form bear a striking resembemance to those posted in Vegas. Funny how that works.
The Churchill Downs pari-mutuel futures are another problem. Not only are the odds much too low for no other resaon than they're only booking 24 seperate interests, but they also hang ridiculously short "morning lines". So then Vegas looks at those morning lines when they come out (and also the final odds when the pools are over), and start slashing their own prices even further (in the cases where any of the Vegas prices are higher than the Churchill ones). And Churchill themselves (either them, or some writers in the Racing Form), will talk about how much "value" a horse has in their pool whenever it happens to be higher than a horse's price in Vegas. As if either number has anything to do with the horse's actual chance of winning the race.