[For The Lead]

I don’t think this is so much a “problem race” as it is a “problem horse”.

Here is a 4 year old with just 6 lifetime races. WHY?
The horse broke its’ maiden in just its’ third start, which was more than a year ago, then it was off for three and a half months. WHY? NW2L or NW1X races are easy to find, so again, WHY the time off?

After its’ next race, where it ran a distance third, it was off again, this time for two months. WHY?

Then it appears the first try on the turf was the horse’s undoing. After that race, which was brutally bad, the horse was off for almost eight months. WHY?

The answer to all the “why’s” is this. The horse had an injury and as I have written many times, in young horses the most common injury is “bucked shins”, which requires time off in order to heal. If the reader wants to learn more about this, just GOOGLE “bucked shins” and read about it.

So, we have a young horse that develops an injury that requires time off. Not always, but many times these horses come back to the races with an effort that is less than stellar because the connections do not want to push the horse to hard since that was the cause of the injury in the first place. So the question becomes, “is the horse ready for a good effort or not”? We can’t know. Speed ratings and the like do NOT provide the answer. It is the horses “physical condition” that matters. Many times we don’t get the answer, good or bad, until today’s race is over.