OK, this is NOT what I had in mind….tried to write this Thursday, hit submit, computer freezes, article gone. No biggie. Wanted to try again last night. Fell asleep. I’ll get up at 6 am and do it. Wrong. Phone rings at 3:30 am. Hospital. In I go for an emergency operation that’s turned into my parnter’s nightmare. Home at 5:30. OK, I do it now! Done at 6:30. Hit submit. NOTHING. DELETED AGAIN! This is gettin’ $&)%&# ridiculous now.<\/P>
But it’s cool now, I think I’ve got it figured out. We’ll see. Anyways, I’m going to do it in installments. This one will be posts 1-5, the second 6-10 and the last 11-14. Beat the clock before it locks. Which, I suppose, means I should stop wasting time bitching and moaning right now…..<\/P>
The Grade 1 Penn Dash has stirred controversy all week long. Insults have been flying, and the trash talk has been fierce. SDMF has called General’s Chariot “General’s Go Kart”. Snowchief has retaliated by labelling Digging the Grave “Digging His Own Grave.” Meanwhile, Keely has guaranteed a win for her colt Night’s Desire. Kingab has warned the masses that he has his own plans for a fourth consecutive Grade 1 on DPCD with Two Storms. Finally, lenny brings his Grade 1 winning machine to Penn, and he’s pulled no punches regarding I Make Stuff Up, whom he claims will win the whole shebang.<\/P>
Well, to all those verbal combatants, words are only words. The action of your steeds on the track will have far greater implications. Let’s see who’s going to stand up and who’s going to sit down in the Penn Dash.<\/P>
PP1 Nine Under <\/STRONG>I think this one hails from the legendary theatrical stables, home of more winners and stakes winners than about, oh, another 4,509,586 players combined in the history of the Sim. Yet, this may be Phil’s greatest challenge. The four year old son of Pulpit has drawn the rail, which means that for his front running style, he’s going to have to gun. When this guy gets shuffled back, bad things happen to him. He seems to lose interest, and just tosses in the towel. So, a good break seems necessary for him, and to do that with some of the other speed in here, he’s going to have to come out like a rocket. Even if he does, can he hold off the closers? He hasn’t been as tough in graded company as he was while waltzing through the ungraded ranks. Tough order, but if there’s ever been a trainer up to the job, it’s theatrical.<\/P> PP2 Royal Smoker <\/STRONG>Five year old son of Smokester has been running very, very solid figs all year, especially recently, but seems to keep running into beasts wherever he goes. His last four have been 104\/105\/105, and what’s he to show for it? Not one single win- in ungraded company. So, now, here he is in a Grade 1 race. He’ll have to step up by about five lengths to win here, and the big question is IF- as in IF he can. Closer will get a good ground saving trip early, but he’ll need to find room late to weave his way through a packed field. There’s a lot on jockey Duane Hinnant in this race. One mistake and Royal Smoker is Royally Smoked.<\/P> PP3 Conspirator<\/STRONG> Here’s how out of touch I am with my own compadres in the super stables- I didn’t even know he was going here until I saw the entries! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Nice enough three year old by Lemon Drop Kid, who was just flat unlucky on dirt. When whirlwind and toppy switched him to turf, he woke up big. He’s fired top notch figs recently- witness the 108 while taking down the Snow Phantom Appreciation Stake (G2), but he hasn’t been a model of consistency. Ran a nice race LTO, stalking and closing to just miss. It seems that his best distance may be precisely seven furlongs, the same distance of today’s race. He’s got the potential, it’s just a matter of whether he wants to show up or not.<\/P> PP4 Raktavija<\/STRONG> I’m not totally out of the loop. I KNEW Raktavija was going to be here. Up until about six weeks ago, I would have told you this is the ONE for this race, but then something funny happened. He got “inconsistentitis” and mixed it in with occasional “stinkitis”. Bad combo, and there’s no medicine for those diseases. Stomped by stablemate Conspirator in the Snow Phantom, this son of Awesome Again is a finicky horse. If he’s in the mix early, things are good. If he gets shuffled back, he loses interest and sticks a fork in himself. He tuned up nicely with a sharp alw score, but to be a part of the early battle, he’s going to have to show some serious hoof, and you have to wonder if that’s going to extinguish any late rally. In with a shot, but it’s going to take a new career top.<\/P> PP5 Two Storms<\/STRONG> Kingab has handled this one masterfully. He tore through conditions, won a nongraded stakes, stomped the field in the Joisy Stakes (G3), and looked primed to be a force through the rest of the season. Then a strange thing happened to Two Storms. He ran an inexplicably dull race in the Never Ready Sprint (G1), and then kingab made a rare mistake. He tried to stretch him out in a brutally tough field in the Canada Mile (G1). The results were disastrous, but perhaps a blessing in disguise. He returned to sprints, but didn’t make the BB- which leaves him dangerously fresh for this race. Was it fate, or was this the plan all along? I don’t pretend to know, but I do know that in his last two, Two Storms has been gathering steam like a Nor’easter, preparing to unleash carnage on someone somewhere. This might just be the place where he makes landfall. A win would bring kingab a fourth consecutive year with Grade 1 win on DPCD. Hell, if that happens, I may rename the whole thing “Kingab’s Champions Day.”<\/P> On to Part 2- posts 6-10- next.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Posts 1-5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-previews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}