April 19, 2008 - race 6 - Santa Anita Race TrackKey races SA 2/14/08 R1 The 3/1/08 6F contest between Uxmal and C R Caper was very close. Uxmal outfinished C R Caper by ½, but at the 5 1/2F mark which is today’s distance, C R Caper was ahead of Uxmal by 1 length. The DRF Past Performances indicate Uxmal steadied at the start, but it didn’t look that bad to me and maybe should’ve read “off awkwardly” instead. Steadied somewhat overstates what happened. He might get a nice stalking trip since the horse to his inside, Arnone seems to have a ton of early speed, and the horse to his outside coming from farther off of the pace. The next race of interest is the 40,000-claiming race on 4/4/08 in which C R Caper faced Polish Pete. C R Caper’s lost ground in the final 1/8, which further indicates that today’s distance of 5 1/2F, is better for him than 6F. Polish Pete really had a bad trip from the ¼ pole onward. At that point Polish Pete was only 1 length behind C R Caper who was in front, but the jockey chose to swing him to the outside compared to C R Caper who cut the corner into the stretch neatly, and causing him to lose about a length of ground to him. Then he was slammed into by the winner Grylls at the top of the lane, and ended up a length or two over as a result, then moved back to his original path, another length or two lost in ground. All the while C R Caper was maintaining a perfectly straight path at the rail, completing what was a perfect trouble free ground saving trip from the 1 post. Despite encountering this trouble, he managed to be 1 length behind him at the wire. If Polish Pete’s performance were adjusted for this trouble, I would put him 2 lengths in front of C R Caper. Ricky El Corredor came out of that 4/4/08 race and was simply outrun. Bayngen Bartok beat Polish Pete by 2 ¼ lengths fair and square on 2/14/08 over this track. He gets Bejarano again, who rode him the last time he won, so despite two consecutive losses, he is probably ready to run. The last two races can be excused because one was on the turf and the race two back because it was a mile, which may have been too long. Indeed if you look at his 7F race on 11/21/07 at HOL, he faded in the stretch. The 3/20/08 race out of which Arnone and Rasgado are coming looks to be too low in terms of the Beyer speed figure. Bayngen Bartok looks to be an 80 Beyer horse on the synthetic, but Rasgado received just a 65 for the effort and Arnone a 59. These two seem to be outmatched by Bayngen Bartok and Polish Pete. That leaves us with Casting Crowns who ran the best race of his career with a Beyer of 77, but the field he beat (Maiden Claiming 32k) was much weaker than the one he faces today, and the margin by which he beat the second through seventh place finishers was about 2 ½ lengths, which doesn’t indicate a particularly strong race. Win on Bangyen Bartok
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