Say Om - in the Thunder Road
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| Cool for cats Robert Mitchum played the role of Junior Johnson in a film that has nothing to do with this stakes race as far as I know. |
But, as much as I like Black Jack Cat (3), I have an inkling old campaigner Om (6) has a chance, especially to gain a piece, which he has done regularly. When will he win again? Today could be the day. But the measures would almost all point to Black Jack.
Among the handicappers, Dan Illman and Jay Siegel seem the only ones to grant that Om could win. Siegel say he'd bet him to win, if he knew he was going to go for the lead, and not rate back.
So that is a big pace question. Whether on the lead or not, Om seems capable of being close, sharing early position with Black Jack and Bowie's Hero (2), winner of the recent G2 Matthias Bros. Mile.
My analysis sorts out 1-2-3-6 as able - and that is not far off of Brad Free, Matt Bernier, Jay Siegel, Dan Illman, or the TVG Final pace accountings. Why give weight to Om?
Look for the errors behind your mistakes but beware of rearview-mirror hindsight biases.Don’t try to justify or excuse your failures. Own them! Conduct unflinching postmortems: Where exactly did I go wrong? And remember that although the more common error is to learn too little from failure and to overlook flaws in your basic assumptions, it is also possible to learn too much (you may have been basically on the right track but made a minor technical mistake that had big ramifications). Also don’t forget to do postmortems on your successes too. Not all successes imply that your reasoning was right. You may have just lucked out by making offsetting errors. And if you keep confidently reasoning along the same lines, you are setting yourself up for a nasty surprise.” -Excerpt From Superforecasting - Philip E. Tetlock & Dan Gardner
Tho Jack seems best, let's suggest for sake of argument that Om may be equal. What portends poorly for one and well for the other, if we face the fact that Om has not won for 2 years but has run well against very good ones?
The only knock on Jack I'd say is time off, which means questioning his form. The good augers for Om are that Om's trainer, Dan Hendrick, gets a good return on going from sprints to routes. And he gets a jockey change to Flavien Prat, who is hitting at an 18% clip. Let's do this.
In the final analysis we hedge. Making an Om place bet. That is a place marker to assert the likliest event. Unlike with machine learning, we are not looking for the most likely event. We are looking for something unlikely, but possible. So doing exactas with both Om and Jack on top.
It being a six horse field, it seems greedy to pick more than a couple of combos. While D'Amato's Bowies Hero showed good form on an unchallenged lead in his last, has very good speed (121 Equifax), and is 4 for 6 at the distance, I will take a pass. My under selection will be Balthus's Next Share (1), whose been getting progressively faster (99-103-110), and was a mere (?) 2 lengths off of stellar Pee Wee Reese while closing well at 6 1/2 F last time in a race where Om ended up 5 L off. So I why shouldn't he be running in the vicinity of Om today? When they are sent on their way race caller will say they were off in "a good easy dispatch."
Pick: 3 and 6 over 1 [ and 3,6]. With a place on 6.
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Om is sent! It is his day. Gets ahead, then rates. Bests a somewhat meandering Black Jack Cat. Beats back the charge of Bowies Hero and a close and closing Next Shares, who perhaps had been too far back early.
The result is 6-2-1.
He had a near 9-length at about the half way point. And bettered any of the others coming at him late. Jack was a flat fifth.Om set fractions of 22.58, 45.75, 1:10.11 and 1:21.77. Said Prat, who rode aggressively, much as Jay Siegel may have wished: "Once he got in the lead I was able to just let him go. He had great speed and I knew that once we got on the inside he would just carry it through. He remained calm and was able to hold them off. He’s incredibly fast and I just let him work.”
They did get close. He beat Bowies Hero by a half-length, who was a slight head better than a charging Next Shares. The slight head deprived this better of a $17 exacta. Even in the small field, one more bet, would have put us ahead, this time, anyway. It was nice to see Om surpass the $1 million earnings mark.
So often the selection decision comes down to a semi-intelliegent guestimate of whether a steadily trying horse will have his day. This worked with Om today (though the betting strategy was a fail). Not long ago, in the San Marcos Stakes, a similar trust placed on Flamboyant (less likely) vs ItInThePost (more likely) was an outright flop, as it was the less likely that was flat and finished up the track, and the more likely strident in winning (tho not by marked margin). - Racetrack Romero.
Show me the chart.
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| How does he dance? Close, very very close. Sometimes into Ashville, sometimes Memphis town. The Revenuers chased him but they couldn't run him down. Each time they thought they had him his engine would explode. He'd go by like they were standing still on "Thunder Road". |
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