The Nomination Is In: The Santa Anita Derby, Wood Memorial and Carter Handicap Grade 1 Spectacular

Welcome friends to The Turk and the Little Turk, I am the Turk and today I offer up a trifecta of Grade One races for you: The Wood Memorial, The Carter Handicap and the Santa Anita Derby. I've been to past editions of these races and I'm here to testify there is nothing more exciting to this horse fan than being at the track for a Grade One showdown. We have showdown galore here with the Three Year old races while the Carter features mostly new entrants into the handicap division squaring off against grey beards like 7 year old Strapping Groom and 6 year old Sahara Sky. I'm a little delayed translating my handicapping thoughts into a blog post as the Little Turk, a second degree black belt, was demonstrating his kick ass form today:  Let's see what sort of form my red pen is in.  Let's get it on!




Where do we start: The tape is always a good idea to get a feel for the size of the animal, how game he was and to help fill in the story you translate from race charts and past performances.


The Gotham G3: Harpoon, Samraat and Uncle Sigh 




GP Alw $61,000 12 March 2014: Social Inclusion and the respected by lightly raced Honor Code.





The Jerome Grade 2: Noble Moon





The San Felipe G2: California Chrome and Schoolofhardrocks





The Rebel G2: Hoppertunity going tough in Arkansas.





RB Lewis Grade 2: Candy Boy





Malibu G1: Central Banker




King's Bishop Grade 1: Central Banker





Gulfstream Park Handicap Grade 2: Golden Ticket




Tom Fool Handicap Grade 3: Strapping Groom, Saturday's Charm and Dads Cap



San Carlos Grade 2: Sahara Sky



That was exhausting, but needed! I  try to do my homework on these stakes runners, and while I fancy myself a good handicapper, you always have to work at the craft.  Lazy handicapping is bad handicapping, and I work to hard earning money to foolishly invest in poor work.

I'm building medium priced superfectas for all three.  I think all three are a bit chalky so as I sit here a few hours before race time, I think I'll let my base handicaps speak for themselves and I'll mull over my bet matrices right up until post parade.  Make sure you pay attention to the track conditions and scratches and changes.  NYRA's website is very good for easy access to info, Santa Anita's website is OK, they make you hunt a bit more for the info.

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Turk Out!