Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Wire Players Dirty Dozen Poll Now Out and TBA Week Kicks Off

The sixth edition of the Wire Players Dirt-y Dozen Poll is now out. Almost everything and virtually nothing has been revealed by the prep races I've witnessed and handicapped this Kentucky Derby season, so hence I brought the lovely Detective Turk in to help me decipher the evidence and solve this deepening mystery. The top two remain the same from the fifth edition, and while neither raced, both had bloggers a flutter with their choices in where to run next, their last prep races before heading to Churchill Downs. Looking at Lucky, with a dirt win that answered the question of how he would take to the surface secured in The Rebel, heads to The Great Race Place for the Santa Anita Derby. Trainer Baffert clearly wants to win the Kentucky Derby and he clearly doesn't think running the Santa Anita Derby will hurt his chances. I won't question him, not my place, and perhaps it helps as bettors may be inclined to not make him such a heavy chalk on race day and instead back the last best dirt effort they see. That very well could be our #2 horse, Eskendereya who will take on a nice field of potential Derby contenders and at a minimum, a solid collection of the current 3 YO crop at the Wood Memorial. If Jackson Bend, Awesome Act or Schoolyard Dreams wildly impresses, as did I Want Revenge's stunning poor gate exit and rousing last year's win proves, the winner could be the morning line favorite in Kentucky over a synth prep horse, as was the case with Pioneerof the Nile last year as well.

Wire Players Dirty Dozen Volume VI



TBA Week kicks off now and its our way of highlighting what a resource we are to horse racing fans.

The Turk is a proud member of the Thoroughbred Bloggers Alliance, a growing collection of voices in the new media talking about horse racing from various angles. Our home web page contains an agregate of not only TBA blogs but blogs and newsfeeds from all over the horse racing world. We also have our TBA standings, a Past Performance engine and a Daily Race Form PP coupon. All good stuff!

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The Turk is bemused by the collection of runners in the Dirty Dozen poll and will need to consult with Detective Turk to discuss the intimate details of the information. The next version of this poll is the key one with all the major preps completed. You have to wonder what we can expect this year: Perhaps the 12th Triple Crown winner is in this group, who knows.

Have fun, Turk Out!

6 comments:

The_Knight_Sky said...

re: #5 Awesome Act.

I'm sure I meant "new addition" to my list.

What a woeful group this 3 year old crop is turning out to be. Sorry.

Wait. I make no absolutely no apologies for calling it as I see it. ;-)

The Turk said...

Norm,

Bemused is my polite way of saying I'm very unexcited by these three year olds. I want to buy a new baseball hat from horsehats but none of these 3 YOs get me jazzed up so my faded out Mine That Bird hat will do for now.

Speaking of unexcited, the coverage on USA Network, while I'm grateful they are trying, sucked badly. The race call was embarrassing. I hope they learn from last week's mess.

Steve Munday said...

Ditto on the USA coverage - almost worse than no coverage at all.

After Lucky proved he can run well on the dirt, Baffert probably saw no compelling reason to prep on dirt once again. It looks like horses going from Pro-Ride to dirt suffer no ill effects if they like dirt. Not so much though with horses going dirt to Pro-Ride. So win or lose, Lucky may not fire his "A" game at Santa Anita Saturday, but that might help his odds on May 1st. Plus, synth speed figs are generally lower than dirt speed figs, so maybe a low last time out fig will scare some money away from fig happy betters.

BTW, that's some detective you got there.

Anonymous said...

I think it's going to be all Lookin At Lucky in the SA Derby, he looks like he's leaps and bounds ahead of the rest here.
I'm hoping Jackson Bend can pull off the shocker in the Wood even though I love Eskendereya. He might have distance limitations, but I really love his guts!

Tony Bada Bing said...

I don't see what's wrong with this crop of three-year-olds vs. any others of recent years. If any gang of sophomores sucked, it was Big Brown's Derby year. Can you name anyone who came out of that crop besides Da'Tara who everybody remembers????

At this point both Eskendereya and Lookin at Lucky have the potential to be special, Triple Crown threats and actually race beyond the Triple Crown trail...

The Turk said...

I'm not knocking or comparing the 3 YO crop toa previous year, I'm just saying no one horse has captured my imagination yet. Perhaps after this weekend and then the Derby someone will get me excited.

Thanks for commenting fellas