Discreet Picks From Discreet Cat

Bluegrass
General Quarters
We expect a huge race from him today

Arkansas Derby
Papa Clem
Expecting a Romp

Well, DC always seems to have the winner. We may as well post for him in his absence.

I was scratching my head for a minute there.....LOL.

Sorry about being gone the last couple of days, i had and emergency spring up and there was nothing i could do about it. I haven't seen the Blue Grass yet, but i did manage to catch the Arkansas Derby, and i was rather struck that Old Fashioned was out alone in front while Papa Clem chose to lay several lengths behind down the backstretch. He cedrationly looked conmfortable in doing so however, and i remaked to a guy i was watching the race with that Papa Clem appeared to have a lot of run left aproaching the second turn and might well be the winner (though i was rooting for Win Willy). I kind of lost track of Old Fashioned on the lead while i was watching the progress of Papa Clem and Win Willy somewhat simultaneously, but i must say i was surprised to see Old Fashioned still pretty close at the wire after the early fractions he had been setting. As for Win Willy, he made his move into the stretch as i expected him to, but he shifted in some and then had to be shifted back out and seemed to lose his momentum and flattened out a bit thereafter. Quite honestly, i was expecting some improvement from Win Willy today because his amazing rally in the Rebel Stakes had come in his two-turn debut (not to mention his stakes debut), and i thought with the two-turn experience and some extra foundation under his belt he was more likely to improve than most. It seems the horse who really improved though was Papa Clem, and we all know from reading this forum that he had incurred some traveling difficulties on the plane ride top Fair Grounds for the Louisiana Derby, and of course the track happened to come up sloppy that day as well. Note again that Papa Clem was able to relax several lengths off the pace today, which might put him into a nice position on Derby Day (as opposed to the frontrunning trip he had in the La Derby). So he's into the Derby now (God Willing), and i'm not quite sure if Win Willy will be heading there also, but i'm sure we'll be finding out soon enough. Old Fashioned at this point looks to be a major pace player in the Derby, as it now appears that he may not be able to resist mixing it up early. Not speed-crazy by any means, i don't think, but it ceratinly didn't look today like they had any interest in taking back (or even trying to set a sensible pace). As mentioned though, he did impress me in holding on as long as he did while taking the worst of it on the front end. It'll be interesting to see the other fractions being set throughout today's Oaklawn card (which i haven't seen yet) to give us further perspective on how these horses ran.