Whiff!

Once is an anomaly, twice is a trend. Surprisingly, amazingly, uncharacteristically, speed is holding on at Keeneland. It happened Friday, an occurrence I was willing to write off as fluke and happenstance. When it happened early yesterday afternoon, I started to second guess my play in the Lexington...but not enough to change a damn thing.

The super was filled out with two horses who ran real fast early, and two that ran sorta fast late. Samba Rooster blitzed a 1/2 in :45.21, with a :22.5 second quarter - that's the type of bottled lightning that usually results in 10th place finishes at Keeneland. This time, it meant holding on for 2nd at 17/1 and blowing up the exotic tickets.

Less impressively, Behindatthebar was able to close willingly into the fast early fractions, although his come home fractions won't put him on any Top 10 radars. It was a professional score for the Pletcher-trained son of Forest Wildcat, if not a stirring one.

Congrats to those who took down the $6958 super ($1) or the $1227 tri ($1). Well played.

The Coolmore Lexington

If you learned anything from last week's Toyota Bluegrass Stakes (GI)...please tell me what it was. That race raised more red flags and question marks than any other prep race this year.

Using it as a template for the Lexington may prove foolhardy, but we will give it a shot.

Atoned (#1) ships in two weeks after he came up empty in the lane in the Illinois Derby (GII), to try the Poly for the first time. His only work over the surface suggests he may do some running today...I'm suggesting differently. Toss.

On the other hand, Salute the Sarge (#2) enters off a win in the 6 furlong San Miguel and is 6-for-6 in the exacta on the plastic. Getting 8.5 panels will be a stretch for him...we expect Michael Baze will get him to keep going.

Other tosses include:
Samba Rooster (#3), an early burner exiting allowance company, he couldn't last at a mile on the dirt, he'll be going backwards after a half.

St. Joe (#4), another speedball who will be done long before the real racing starts

Riley Tucker (#10), a pace presser who will be a little too close, too early and come up flat in the lane

Red Sandy (#11), in against winners for the first time, he'll need to improve about 12 lengths to sniff a piece of the super.

That leaves the 2,5,6,7,8,9 as our tableau from which to make a play.

Tomcito (#8), the Peruvian wonderhorse, fired a bullet in his only work over the Keeneland surface on Tuesday. His late running style is a good fit here - he'll be picking off tired rivals even if he doesn't like the Poly. He'll also be a huge underlay, so I'm not sure how much I will use him in the exotics.

Racecarp Rhapsody (#5), Behindatthebar (#7) and Big Glen (#9) are grinders with excellent records on synthetics. I'll lump them together in my keys and hope the public ignores them.

The upsetter in the mix, with a morning line of 20/1, is Felon (#6). His worktab (over both Poly and turf) shows nothing but bullets, he's by Stephen Got Even, so he will relish the extra 1/2 panel, he has raced exclusively on this surface and he's making only his 4th lifetime start, which suggests he has plenty of upside. What stands out, though, are his connections. Trainer Michael Maker is hitting with 32% of the runners he sends out in '08; Julian Leparoux is on fire lately at Keeneland; and when those two hook up, they hit the wire first 38% of the time.

I'll be keying Felon on the bottom of my tri and super plays, with Salute the Sarge on top of them. A 2-7-6-5 finish will send me to the window to cash multiple tickets.

Ventline

In retrospect, launching a blog at roughly the same time my daughter was born may not have been the best idea. The time available to handicap the races has been truncated dramatically, leaving little-to-no time to write about it.

Yesterday's events, however, require a certain amount of venting.

The Keeneland card featured a record Pick 6 carryover of just over $300,000, a sum that jumped to over $1 million by the time the gates opened on the first leg of the Pick 6. By the time it was over, my first or second choices had won 5 of the 6 races, with the sole outlier being a race won by my 3rd choice. So I was one of the 41 ticket cashers who took down the $18,000 payout, right?

No. Ridiculously, no. You see, I wasn't satisfied with my coverage in a couple races and wanted to go a little deeper. Being on a limited budget, however, and not willing to make another deposit mid-month, I needed to fatten the bankroll a little in order to do so. In my greed, I played and missed the first couple races at Keeneland, depleting my account just enough so that I could no longer play my 'AAAAAA' ticket, i.e. the ticket that covers every likely winner if each race is run the way I anticipate it. As I mentioned above, each race was very close to form, and every single winner was in my 'A' column. However, because I was a damn fool, I had to toss a couple A- horses, I'm left holding a couple worthless tickets and writing about the $18,000 payout that I didn't win.

^%$*#!!!