Now it rains

Of course as soon as I mentioned the lack of rain and the hard track, we had a deluge right afterwards, which meant Saturday's card had to be handicapped completely different.

Which brings up the Derby contenders.

One in particular, SIDNEY'S CANDY, is bred for the softer cushion of turf and weter tracks. He would be out of his element if the weather was dry and sunny on Thursday and Friday, baking the track into a hard rock again.

However, he would be a monster if the track was not as insanely hard. Churchill does this on purpose. MR PROSPECTOR is a favorite Kentucky stallion, although he was just a 6 furlong specialist, and many of the same people who owned Churchill stock owned stock in MR PROSPECTOR.

MR PROSPECTOR foals were something like 0 for 40 leading into the late 1980s, for the Kentucky Derby, the biggest goose egg ever.

So Churchill determined to make the track harder and harder, no matter how many horses it crippled, just to help the sprint bloodlines in Derby week. That is when the dosage started to fall apart. In essence, horses bred to go a mile now would win the Derby. Of course, every Derby some runners would be crippled by the hard surface. It might not show until later, as in the case of Barbaro, but it still crippled them. Only someone completely ignorant of Physics could deny this without lying.

But when it rains, it begins sloppy, with a still fairly hard surface and favoring of early speed. This early speed doesn't always go to the front. A six furlong specialist may well run fractions that make it come from behind in a sprint, but he is still a six furlong specialist.

The slop turns to mud, however, fairly quick, and this gives the cushion for a runner. It's like human joggers who run on grass and dirt instead of on the hard concrete that the more ignorant joggers run on. Those who run on concrete WILL be crippled eventually. It's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when".

SIDNEY'S CANDY is well bred, with a dosage of 1.86. However, a look back at the bloodlines will show turf specialists like LYPHARD and EXPLODENT. On the turf, he'd be favored. And if Churchill's surface is still muddy this Saturday, he'll be hard to deny, and a very good Across the Board bet.

If it is dry and fast, he'd best be left to the bottom of superfectas at best.