Preakness Results 2009

Preakness Results 2009
Well, even though I called the winner of the race Rachel Alexandra (along with everyone else), Mine That Bird’s (again) amazing second half sprint destroyed all my combo bets, giving me the rather lackluster result of $152 out, $140 back for a loss of 12 virtual dollars (a big gain of 6 bucks without that superfecta bet! Wheeee!).

Borel commented that Rachel Alexandra wasn’t running the best she could, didn’t seem crazy about the track… but won anyway. Was this hype for the Belmont or accurate? From watching the stretch run of this race, it’s pretty obvious that another 1/16 of a mile would have given Mine That Bird the likely victory – he was gaining hard on Rachel Alexandra after catching up to and subsequently blowing off Musket Man, my pick for the likeliest challenger in this one. The mile and a half length always figures into the make-or-break factor in The Belmont Stakes, and right now I’d think Mine That Bird, not a one-hit wonder, would be the favored horse simply on the basis of these second half bursts past the pack. I could easily see him passing horses running out of gas down the stretch.

We’ll find out in three weeks. And hopefully I’ll do better in picking the likely money field. I think I should go back over my notes on this one and try to remember why I dropped 4th place horse Flying Private from my original field in favor of some of the other also-rans… hitting the superfecta, to me, is like solving the big puzzle & I just always wanna get it right…
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