The Matt Bernier Show Ep 4 March 2, 2020

[Music] what's going on welcome into the matt bernier show part of the in the money media network my name is matt bernier you can follow me on twitter bernier underscore matt today is monday march the 2nd 2020 this is episode 4 of the matt bernier show going to go back and look at two big races from this past weekend one the inaugural saudi cup won the fountain of youth one will have ramifications as far as in all likelihood older horses are concerned here in the united states in months to come also the fount of youth will have ramifications on the three-year-old picture coming up as we get closer and closer to the kentucky derby i'll follow that up with what some folks have asked for and have been interested in in the comment section beneath the youtube player which i'll talk about more momentarily talk about my top five three-year-olds at this point obviously this thing can change dramatically from week to week with all these prep races being run but just five horses i'm really intrigued with four of them on raw ability one of them a little bit more of a flyer so maybe that's something to just kind of stay tuned for and maybe kind of piques your interest a little bit and we'll wrap things up as we have with the first few episodes a little bit of a q a go over the pick history pick history just to give you a heads up hasn't changed much because i actually put one horse out there from this past weekend so not a tremendous change there i was much more locked into golf frankly as opposed to some of the other racing going on boy you want to talk about a roller coaster of emotions from me watching ben on and gary woodland over a four-day stretch i'm not going to go too deep into the woods for some of the you that don't care about golf but been on on thursday front nine or nine front nine his first nine he started on the back minus one six a seven over excuse me ended up his round six over still somehow got into contention on sunday and just flattened out down the lane but still good showing from those two boys nonetheless if you couldn't tell i like to get involved in golf golf's a really underrated sport to be betting on just throwing that out there anyway as far as details are concerned if you are new to this show thanks for checking it out you can find it on youtube over on in the money media network's website you can download the podcast right there or you can download it in any of the other places that you typically do apple podcast you know the drill by now however you listen though please rate review and subscribe if you're over on youtube make sure that bell icon is lit up so anytime something is uploaded on the in the money media page you'll get that video you'll get a notification you can go over there click right on it right now it's just me but i'm sure in in the future there may be some things that we sort of work on in time but for now you've got the youtube option if you have questions comments concerns either on twitter at bernie or underscore matt or beneath the video player on youtube so a number of ways for you to interact with this program and i really appreciate the folks that have been involved with that that i think adds a great deal of value something i don't think i utilized very well in the first iteration of this show back when i was with the forum so i think this is something i'd like to keep going the sort of back and forth it's probably just going to be one a week one sort of question or response whatever the case may be um but definitely the more interaction there is who knows maybe it turns into two three or you never know but i like the way that things have started off as far as that is concerned and again you can find the podcast version audio only in all of the standard kind of places that you typically do the in the money web page as well as apple podcasts and and the whole nine there so uh without further ado let's get things going and we'll start by taking a look back at some of the races from this past weekend the inaugural saudi cup was run on saturday afternoon here in the united states it featured a pretty big time performance from the winter maximum security and i saw some folks after the race suggest that you know some people love the horse some people really dislike the horse whatever the case may be whatever your feelings on the horse are i think it's a pretty safe bet or a fair statement to say that maximum security is probably the most polarizing horse we've seen run in the united states and arguably the world in a number of years uh polarizing in that you know if you want to compare him to justify and that justify won the triple crown and then he was gone and he's up it's up for debate what did he beat how does it stack up he never really ran that fast whatever the case may be whatever your arguments are for or against a horse like justify go back to american pharaoh there's really nothing to argue about american pharaoh's greatness but he was polarizing because he was just something that we hadn't seen in many many years this horse maximum security just feels like he just he reminds me a little bit of of tim tebow where some people loved him and some people hated him and you could you know his his sort of merits were up for debate i think a race like this for maximum security kind of squashes any question about his ability though um not that many people really were questioning how talented the horse was i mean he's done really nothing wrong in the racetrack i always complained he was a little green early on in his career with lead changes and things like that but his most recent runs have been really really next level top-notch when you factor in the fractions of this race and he's never the sexiest thing out on the racetrack i mean luis saiz was all over him early on to try to keep him up to what it was seemingly a wicked pace running the far turn he's out in the clear yes but science is just pumping away and he's trying to maintain sort of connection to the field or i shouldn't say the field but to the leader mucho gusto but when the running really gets tough he keeps fighting and he keeps finding so look again wherever you fall on the sort of maximum security debate about what he is do you like him do you not like him whatever the case may be i think you can't argue that the horse is supremely talented and uh just a really impressive effort here from this horse and he is not going to run in the dubai world cup marcus hirsch basically all these updates come from marcus hurst from the daily racing forum apparently he's headed home on friday uh this coming friday he's going to come back to the united states and who knows what his next move from there is going to be i'm sure he's going to get some time off typically the jason service barn they don't run him back all that quick anyway so i would imagine we're not going to see him for a little while who knows what a sort of a next race for a horse like this could be i mean it to me you know today being march 2nd uh you know a race like the mile is a little bit interesting if you're looking for a spot like that where it is a one turn mile coming off of a lengthy layoff but i mean frankly he did a one turn mile and an eighth off of a layoff and halfway around the world so to say that he wouldn't be able to handle that i don't i don't that would be an issue he's already proven himself at belmont park um i would think that would be an interesting spot if you don't want to go in a race like that or you want to sort of plot differently if you want a two-turn type of race maybe the stephen foster at churchill downs is a spot that you want to point toward or or maybe you just wait until saratoga with a horse like this who knows i'll be very curious to see what the plans are for maximum security midnight be sue i was screaming like a maniac watching her look first things first a brilliant ride from mike smith i feel like mike smith gets a lot of flack um you know despite the fact that he riot he rides all the biggest and best horses but i feel like he does catch some flack for some of his rides this one i thought was brilliant he clearly judged the pace very very well he saved damn close to every inch of ground that you possibly could in a spot like this and she ran her heart out and as i said in last week's show the idea for me with midnight beast and part of the reason that she and chrysler barrel were the ones i was most interested in for a race like this chrysler barrel because he had never really done anything wrong midnight though the big thing for me was the one turn i've i've just firmly believed that her best races are at one turn and that's a that's a gift that's a special piece i think another horse in recent memory that i would have loved to have seen what he could have done had they kept him at one turn and i know it's so hard to sit here and say this with a straight face because most of the big money is going two turns and going longer but frosted i don't think that mile was sort of an aberration i think that was what he was if they had allowed him to run at 7 8 of a mile a one turn mile one turn or you know if you want to say a race like the jockey club gold cup sort of a one and a half turn mile and a quarter some horses are better suited and can handle that better than others can and i think midnight bisou is case in point i think she just for whatever reason loves the one turn configuration and like i said last week it's not that i'm questioning her ability going two turns or going longer the distance isn't the issue there is no issue let me make that abundantly clear she can run and win anywhere but i just think she is so far superior at these one turn configuration races and that's special that's not something that that every horse can do and for her to be as versatile as she is but boy i just thought this was a fantastic race from her a fantastic ride from mike smith um she won't run in dubai they'll come back here i believe jeff bloom was quoted from marcus hirsch's piece uh one of his updates saying um they're gonna work backwards with the breeders cup as sort of the target uh keep in mind the breeders cup this year is at keenland i look at midnight bisou and i say the first race i would run want to run it i know they're run on the same day last year she won the ogden fips by 100 lengths i would love to see them try the mile with her i know she doesn't have any real there's good there's such little that she can do to enhance her value from a broodmare standpoint i would imagine i i mean barring a win in a race like the breeders cup classic i don't know again coming from someone that doesn't know the ins and outs of the breeding industry and what people value more so than others i look at that mile everybody calls it the stallion making race i just think it's a perfect race for a horse like this i think eight furlongs she's versatile enough to be closer to a more tepid pace than what we saw over there in saudi arabia on saturday the the mile is not a problem the one turn's not a problem she loves belmont park that to me and again i recognize that ogden fix is on the same day and the money i don't think is tremendously different so if you think you're gonna face a field of five in that race you're gonna be one to five or you might face a field of 12 in the mile and you're gonna be one of the favorites i can understand the idea of let's get the easy money and let's move on i would just love to see it from a sporting standpoint that because i think she could win i think she could very easily win a race like the mile regardless of who shows up her best she's proven her best is damn close to anybody else's best and at the one turn i just think she's i think she's a one-turn specialist she can do the other races she can do a two-term mile and sixty and two-term mile and eighth i just think she's an exceptional one-turn horse period male or female mucho gusto uh i thought he just felt the effects of that early pace and yeah he got drifty down the lane and jason service made some comments about erad ortiz um i look at rad probably could have done more as far as the whip was concerned when he was hitting him left-handed that's when he started to float out no coincidence that maximum security was trying to go on the outside of him then he started going right-handed he started drifting in um if you if you believe those fractions there's no reason not to and then you factor in the idea of the no run-up situation like they were going guns blazing out there and for mujo gusto to still be around at the end of it i thought this was a big effort i'm really interested that they're going on dubai with him because i've never felt that a mile and a quarter is really his best distance i feel like he is more of a miler mile and 16th mile and an eighth type but if you think that this race didn't take too much out of him it is a quick turnaround i mean dubai world cup's only in a few weeks now mile and a quarter i guess if you want to look at it and say at maydan you get them out on the front end and you just say come and catch me you know i i suppose anything is possible and again bob baffert knows better than anyone about shipping over there and taking care of business uh mucho gusto i'll be curious to see what we get from him in the dubai world cup again i always feel like he's better going a little bit shorter a horse that i don't feel that way about but i was thoroughly impressed with against arguably our best dirt horses i don't want to say arguably they're our best dirt horses maximum security midnight bisou mckenzie who i'll get to in a moment mucho gusto tacitus the whole lot ben battle ran his eyeballs out for a horse that his entire career he has been a grass horse and with the exception of the most recent run the prep leading into the saudi cup i thought he ran phenomenal and for a horse also going a one turn configuration that i feel like he just wants more and more ground i think the home team's gonna have a big big chance with this horse in the world cup here in a few weeks i assume they're gonna run him in a spot like that mile and a quarter and two turns i think is gonna be a lot kinder to a horse like this the fact that he didn't get totally run off his feet i thought was really encouraging ben battle say what you will this to me he may have been the surprise of the group for him to run as well as he did against our best dirt horses i i was really taken by this performance i believe he got his nose down for third you know if he goes and wins the dubai world cup all of a sudden you start wondering at the end of the year does a race like the breeders cup classic become of interest to the connections you know and in between you know he doesn't have to come over here to the states maybe you run him in a number of those group one turf races that he's been shown to be very very proficient at handling i just think he's a really neat horse and i think the connections have done well by him and i'd love to see them run in the dubai world cup hopefully run well there and then who knows maybe there is a scenario where at the end of the year we can see him here in the united states running on dirt in our biggest race the breeders cup classic um tacitus he ran well i don't really have much more to add i i never really thought he looked like a threat he was making up a little bit of ground down the lane um he carried his head a little bit awkwardly and and you know you heard frankie de torre and some of the other riders speaking of the dirt at the uh abdul aziz the the track over in saudi arabia that the kickback was not not what we're accustomed to in the united states it wasn't so harsh but i saw tacitus in behind runners and it seemed like he had his head cocked down to the inside and i don't know if it was the kickback or just him being a little bit goofy a little awkward whatever the case may be but he did run on well again at the end when he leveled off i don't know that i saw a giant improvement from him in this race but i'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt this is his first start in a few months and they are going to go on to the dubai world cup with him so a mile and a quarter seemingly would be to his benefit uh we'll see what we get here in a few more weeks and the last horse i'm going to touch on i'm not going to really dive into any of the other international horses because there was nothing giant really to speak of mckinsey though we have to speak about his his effort in a spot like this because he never looked like he was traveling comfortably on the far turn looked like he was in deep water he was essentially eased as they turned for home uh you know it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you this was a disastrous performance for this horse i uh first things first the decision for the dubai races is still pending um i just i also there can be there can be somewhere in the middle and it's the thing i love and hate about twitter and social media at the same time it feels like rational thoughts there are few and far between i had so many people throwing out things that well i mean look mackenzie's not that good mackenzie's not that good i i mean he's pretty darn good you you don't go and win a race like the whitney like he does you don't run second in the breeders cup classic you don't as a three-year-old didn't he win the malibu i mean this is i have technology here i can look this up i guess all i'm saying is this is this is not a bum of a horse sometimes it happens where for one reason or another they don't deliver the performance that you would hope that they would and mckinsey did win the malibu is a three-year-old so we're talking about a grade one winner between seven furlongs and nine furlongs at saratoga and santa anita let's not all of a sudden sort of revision his history sit there and say the horse is no good the horse is very very talented is he one of the top 15 or 20 of the past 10 years no probably not but he's not far off he's run some big races so look i'm sure they're gonna go through make sure everything is okay with him he didn't run well for whatever reason here but he nearly won the met mile last year he won the whitney i think we are so quick to just turn the page and say oh the horse can't run well i don't know if that's the case especially when he has a track record i know that the horse on his best day can run giant races for whatever reason he didn't fire over in saudi arabia i'm not going to hold that against him and he certainly doesn't mean all of a sudden he's a bum he's a nice horse hopefully he's okay and hopefully we'll see him here again in the united states sooner rather than later oddly enough the uh the main event here as far as racing was concerned in the united states on saturday was the fountain of youth i don't have a heck of a lot to to add to it i i thought it was a pretty straightforward performance i thought eta indian ran phenomenal i thought it was an unbelievable ride by florent geru and this just sort of continues a trend we've seen from flo be aggressive and that's all people want if you go out and lose the way that your best running style is now look i'm not suggesting riders should all get out there and just get hook up and duels going 44 going a mile on the 16th but in a race like this where the outside draw is far from ideal use your speed nobody else to the inside wants to go he clears off and i understand the fractions didn't pop up during the replay or during the live pieces but the the fractions that have been posted that i've seen around they're pretty legitimate 23 46 and 3 11 and 1 stop the clock and 43 flat i just thought this was a big effort all around from this horse and this is a race that is not totally out of left field i mean this is this is very similar to the race that we saw at the beginning of february from this horse in the holy bowl the difference is there was no tis the law in this race so as far as the numbers the nuts and bolts are concerned a 97 buyer speed figure excuse me a buyer's speed figure from etay indian in a 118 raw time form us rating again for those of you that are unfamiliar about a 20 point differential when both figure makers kind of line up uh there are those occasions though where one is considerably higher than the other or one is considerably lower than the other and then at that point you need to go through and just kind of you know do with what you will you as the handicapper need to determine what you think of that when they match up relatively close you pretty much know that this is a pretty lock stock sort of number i thought this was just a big effort all around i have no knocks about this i think this is a nice horse the real thing is to me now it goes and flatters the form of that run in the holy bowl and flatters the form of tis the law who blew the doors off at the indian now tis the law much has been made look he's got a little bit of a spotty work tab i believe barkley tag said there was some shoe issue that precluded him from uh working when he was scheduled to a few weeks back i believe i read this morning that he had a nice easy half mile this morning getting ready for the florida derby so i mean there are not it's not as though there aren't obstacles for tis the law to overcome anytime you miss some training that's a little bit of a red flag especially when you have such a sort of set time frame that you need to be at your absolute best and ready to peak but this effort certainly flatters the form and the effort of tis the law at the indian i think look you got to look at him and say he's a legitimate horse at this point i also like that he's run pretty fast and i know people really like to get into the what do you think of the crop is the crop any good is the crop bad well you know whatever you know again certain people have different opinions of things uh from what i've seen so far from just a numbers standpoint i think it's a pretty good group of three-year-olds in stark contrast to what we saw last year where it felt like that group was just kind of you know kind of feeling themselves out figuring things out and look good horses did emerge from that group maximum security is the head of the class but at a indian he is just one of a few in this spot at this age in this group that i feel like to date they've already run pretty fast we've got horses up over 100 buyer already we've got horses sniffing 100 buyer and we have just turned the calendar into march so i think this is a promising horse and a promising runner going forward for a relatively promising group of horses um as far as the rest of the field is concerned let's first start off with the big disappointment the big flop dennis's moment uh beaten as the six to five favorite and not just beating he finished last never looked like he was running at any point um you know you have the built-in excuse that this is his first start since the breeders cup juvenile which given his disastrous start do you really want to hold that race against him as well and do you think he really got anything out of that when it seemed like when i believe errad wrote him in the breeders cup when you could tell that he wasn't really going to go on he didn't beat him up too badly in this race here he never looked like he was going to threaten at any point so now the the question is do you look at this and say this is really his first race since the beginning of november and you give him credit for that race at santa anita or do you think a little bit outside the box and say well he didn't really get anything out of that breeder's cup juvenile is this really like his first race since what september october if that's the case you can at least give him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt for this spot having said that you wanted to see something and you saw nothing if i were on the dennis's moment bandwagon i mean i'd be very very concerned right now i'm not ready to totally write the horse off and say that he can't run but boy you know you've gotta at least be a little bit concerned that we're running out of time if you're thinking kentucky derby if you want to say look he at least got to race into him now and you can proceed whether it ends up being the florida derby the wood memorial the bluegrass you know any of the final preps you'll at least get one more shot and if he doesn't run well there then obviously you need to sort of work your way backwards and think okay either something's not right here or he just hasn't really moved forward from those two you know eye-catching victories in his first two lifetime starts the only other horse that i'm going to speak of directly from this race is country grammar the rest of the field if you have any questions you want to know my thoughts on horses leave them beneath the video player on youtube or ask me on twitter at bernie or underscore matt and guess what that goes for the rest of the stakes races and any actually under the races at gulfstream on saturday if you have any questions directly about any of the other great stakes let me know beneath the video player on youtube or on twitter at bernie or underscore matt i'll either reply directly or maybe i'll just tie that into next week's show so we'll go about it that way because i know there were other big races and big performances that happened but as far as today's show is concerned the only other horse in this race that i'm going to speak of is country grammar now country grammar is a third time starter coming in coming out of that race he made his third lifetime start in the fountain of youth goes out for chad brown javier had the mount he was essentially out of the picture for the majority of the run now if we go back to the start of the race he breaks reasonably well but then he gets pinched ends up getting shuffled back to last not great riding the first turn he's about three four path essentially last down the back side you don't see him other than a little chicklet on the bottom rounding the far turn you don't see him and when you do see him uh he's just sort of spinning his wheels then when they turn for home he actually shows a little bit of interest down the lane and finishes in a bit of a blanket there for the second placing but he ends up fifth he gets the worst of it all the the part that is at least interesting to me when i see a horse like this this is his first start since november 11th of last year so he's been gone for a few months more likely than not needed a race when you look at the final come home times for all the runners uh your winner et indian came home in 31.72 far and away the fastest in the race the second fastest though and by a pretty healthy margin is country grammar in 3204. country grammar then galloped out very very well and when you look and see at him run when you look at and see at him run that's terrible english when you look and see him run the way that he moves i look at him and think that he's a mile and a quarter kind of horse the the problem may be i don't know that he's going to be ready for a race like the kentucky derby regardless of the fact that he's going to get at least one more start so i'll occasionally do this and i'll look like a like a big old dummy it's worked sometimes it hasn't worked other times i look at country grammar and i think this could very very easily be a traverse type i think he's going to need some more seasoning some more experience he's gonna need to get faster which look he's run three times you're an 83 buyer here on saturday afternoon but to me he's that kind of horse that you get some more seasoning into him you get him going a little bit uh you know obviously he had the issue at the start so that wasn't ideal but to me he's he's that sort of he looks anyway like a horse that's going to want to run all day he might need some experience under his belt so if they choose to go with one of these final round preps great if it works you want to run them in the kentucky derby good on you do what you got to do if that doesn't work i would like to i would hope they would sort of re-reset things and say okay we're not going to stop on the horse because he clearly needs to run and we want to keep going with him but if the travers ends up being a goal maybe instead of trying to run in a race like the preakness of the belmont stakes you look maybe on the undercard of the belmont stakes at a race like the easy goer you hope that springboards you to a race like the gym dandy and then into the travers i guess long-winded way of saying i think country grammar could be a good horse i just think he's gonna need some time and i think down the road we'll probably see his best for chad brown and company so that's the only other horse directly from this race i'm gonna touch on but again any other horse in this race or any of the other races at gulfstream on saturday that you have uh sort of questions about or you're curious about want to know some opinions and thoughts beneath the video player on youtube or over to me on twitter at bernie or underscore matt i know some people really enjoy these segments and i know some people think it's just the silliest exercise but it's that time of year and people genuinely are curious maybe they haven't heard of of a certain name or they haven't seen the race and they want to go back and watch it is that time of year it is a tradition unlike any other it is the derby top whatever contenders list and again some people think it's just a silly silly exercise i think it's good in that again if if you perhaps there's a horse on some someone else's top ten list that maybe you you've never heard of or you missed the race or whatever the case may be you at least see that then you can go do a little bit of homework on your own and say oh wait a minute there's something here or you look at it and say i want no part of that horse i'm not gonna do a top ten i'm gonna start by doing a top five right now um and i'll i'll keep doing this periodically maybe it is in every week sort of segment and again a lot of it depends on the feedback that i get from the listeners and the viewers if you all like this i'll continue to do it if you all think this is a waste of time maybe i'll do it once a month who knows but for now it'll be a top five and maybe as we get closer and closer to the derby and things become a little bit clearer knowing that right now just the the leaderboard can change so dramatically from week to week i'm only gonna go to the top five and as i said at the top this top five four of them pretty formal they're not going to be that much of a surprise one of them i i think maybe a little bit surprising to people he's a little bit of an interesting price no surprise that four of the five come from guys named baffert and pletcher uh let's start off and i'll do it in reverse chronological order so number five for me is the the sort of intriguing price and i think the horse is intriguing doesn't mean that you will let me know beneath the video player or on twitter at bernie or underscore matt one of todd fletcher's runners farmington road i spoke about farmington road when i went back and looked at one of the risen star races where he was i think he probably ran 10 furlongs in a nine for a long race and the fact that he finished with the second fastest final eighth in that race to me is promising i think the horse is continuing to improve and kind of put things together because i don't think mentally he's totally there yet he's done some goofy things in the mornings you can see workouts over on places like xbtv um he still does things a little bit quirky and maybe he's not the you know the it horse in the barn as far as the three-year-olds are concerned but i think farmington road is a horse that'll run all day if he takes another step forward in whichever race he runs in next whether it's louisiana derby or they want to try to run him somewhere else i think farmington road is a little bit of an interesting sort of outsider if you will outside of the more obvious horses so he for me is number five for what it's worth he worked on saturday morning uh along with uh governor morris they they worked a half mile and 49 and two down at palm beach so farmington roads number five for me as far as the derby top five is concerned for this week march uh let's say the week of march the second a number four for me is one of batford's horses that's nadal now nadal took the world by storm when he broke his maiden back in january by a hundred lengths i've got a big buyer of 98 everybody said woof you know he he's he's the bee's knees comes back and wins in his first time against winners in the san vicente it's a great stakes race goes a little bit longer from six and a half to seven furlongs but it felt like it was a little bit more workmanlike now i will say i think genoa believe the horse that he ran against and only beat by three quarters of the length i think jenobo is going to be a really nice sprinter down the road nadal lost all of the luster when one of his other barn mates showed up and blew the doors off of a maiden field we'll talk about him in a minute so i think maybe he's i don't want to say he has become sort of an afterthought i think everyone just looks at charlatan and says oh my goodness well you know what is this thing nadal's a pretty darn good horse though from what we've seen through two lifetime starts as i said when i spoke about san vicente though i'm gonna be very very curious to see how both nadal and nobly come out of that race because they both ran really really hard i don't know what the plans are for ginobili i hope they keep him going shorter nadal though with this pedigree by blame out of a pulpit mayor i want to at least see one try of him going longer and who knows maybe that'll happen sooner than later but nadal for me number four on this round's top five number three is charlatan well i just kind of tipped off that's the other baffert that i have on the list i love the pedigree here spites towns they can do anything they can sprint they can go long dirt doesn't matter but you look at the damn authenticity she was a graded stakes winning dirt router there is pedigree there's reason to believe that this is going to be a nice horse they paid a ton of cash for him 700 grand and all he did was go out there in his career debut and earn a 105 buyer speed figure faster than the career debut of justify who again we know what he ultimately ended up doing i think this is a really talented horse i'm going to be fascinated to see what kind of path they go on with this runner are they going to follow the justify path and give him that one chance or two chances he just finally got one chance i believe but are you gonna go and wait for a race like the san anita derby or based on the workouts he's been on the tab he's got uh two works since that maiden score two works back on february the 25th 47 and 4 a bullet going a half mile and then i have it listed as him working seven eighths of a mile this morning on march the second and 26 and three so we'll find out where his next step is but charlotte and i mean you can't deny the talent horses the horses don't freak out like that and not have some inkling of ability i'll be interested to see what path they choose to go on with charlatan he's number three for me number two is tis the law now tis the law already spoke about him earlier because he was flattered his form anyway and the holy bull keep in mind the holy bull was his first start since the end of november so he had the right to perhaps need a little bit of uh shake the rust off type all he did was go out and beat etse indian by three lengths et indian comes back wins the fountain of youth on saturday with a 97 buyer so the form of that race is legitimate it's flattered i loved everything i saw in that race from him the agility the ability to get out there listen to commands not be some sort of a headstrong kind of nut job out there what manny asked him to do he did i think that says a lot for a horse this early in the season um the concern now is sure he missed that little bit of time you'll know if you can take a look at his his workouts at the bottom of whatever past performances you look at he ran on february the 1st he came back he worked on february the 10th and then he was nowhere until this morning where he worked a half mile in 50 seconds at palmettos if you want to look at that and say that that's going to be the thing that undoes this horse you know that's your prerogative i'm not it's early enough where i'm not ready to do that he still has some time he should probably have what three more works if they're going to run them in the florida derby there's still time and from what i've seen on the race track i can make the argument that he is as likely a winner as any one of these three-year-olds when it comes to the kentucky derby because of the things that he has shown through four lifetime starts i think he's a very very talented racehorse i think barkley tag has a live one in tis the law he's number two frankly on my list he's probably the most likely kentucky derby winner i would say of the five at this point but there is one horse that i'm just really really i'm falling for and he happens to be the workmate of farmington road and that is the other pletcher horse and i spoke about him i believe it was episode one or two governor morris i really am high on this horse funnily enough or oddly enough that the top two on my list at this point are both by constitution a horse that as a race horse i didn't like in the slightest but he has been a unbelievable sire to kick things off early on in his career uh governor morris i just really thought that n1x race down at tampa was perfect he needed to move he didn't look all that visually impressive out there but in all reality he hadn't run since the beginning of october he needed the race he was far from 100 he earned a competitive speed figure he beat some decent horses and if all goes as planned that was a nice sort of shake the rust off and we're going to move forward whatever the next race is wherever that may be you know todd pledger can get a horse ready to go for the first saturday in may he's an expert with the three-year-olds i just feel like this is a beautiful a beautiful starting off point we didn't see the flashy performance we didn't see the the race that's going to get people to go oh my god he's he's this he's the the second we didn't get a charlatan effort when charlatan goes out there and blitzes a field everybody sees that and everybody goes holy smokes what was that thing at face value when you just watch the tape of the return effort for governor morris you look at you go you know okay it was fine you know he didn't destroy a field he had to work hard for it but those are the things that i like knowing that that was nothing more than a tune-up getting him ready for what's still to come they're building a sort of foundation to get him ready to go governor morris lands at number one as far as my top five at this point is concerned let me know your thoughts on twitter at bernie or underscore matt or beneath the video player on the youtube channel let's wrap up episode four with a little q a in pick history uh for pick history as i alluded to at the top only one pick that i threw in there it was a beekeeper or bee catcher it was a motion horse that broke the maiden most recently ran one of the early card stakes races on saturday uh it blinkers on for that most recent run got him a lot closer to the front uh this time around completely misses the break there's no speed in the race and he just basically didn't pick his feet up so that was another l um it is what it is we move on here to the q a and i promise there will be more i'm going out to tvg this week there are going to be picks that we can populate for next week's episode so there'll be more as far as a sample is concerned with the uh with the pick history there will be more to come trust me just bear with me on that one as far as the q a is concerned for this week uh we're gonna go back this is a comment from someone from episode three on the youtube channel uh nancy moran i'm gonna kind of spark note this thing and break off the top piece of it um but the question is uh i'm wondering if you'd be willing to do a small segment sometime that would be something like your five or seven eight ten essential rules of handicapping something that breaks down step by step how you typically analyze a race or a broader perspective on what you think the essential questions are when looking at any given horse i don't know if there are a lot of other newer players among your listeners that would benefit but i think it would be interesting to get a breakdown on your capping process thanks and good luck nancy thank you for the question thank you for watching and listening um as far as that goes i'll i'll give you a couple of sort of ways to to go about things because i know some people really don't enjoy doing certain areas of the work and whatever the case may be so um if you are someone that just likes to go over the paper whether it's the racing form or equibase or thorograph or whatever the case may be first things first for me it's always pace got to find out where the horses are going to be situated if you're looking for a bit of a shortcut and a reliable shortcut i would suggest something like timeformus with their pace projector i think it's for the most part very very accurate i don't want to sit here and say at the end all be all you need to do a little bit of handicapping on your own but i think it's a very good tool to use to sort of get a if you don't have the time or you don't feel comfortable going through and assessing where certain horses project to be throughout the run of the race the pace projector for timeformus does a pretty good job of giving you a bit of a grasp of what to expect possibly going forward as far as the pace goes so pace is number one number two for me if we're just going off of the paper is looking at the race from a numbers standpoint and recognizing if we have a group of graded stakes horses and they've run a number of times and we kind of know what they are at this point in their career let's say they're a bunch of four-year-olds that say it's the whitney and you typically get a good field put together more likely than not they're going to run to something close to what they have been in recent memory it seems rather unlikely you're going to get a race out of nowhere from a horse that's a 40 to 1 shot unless there is reason to believe that whether it's trips or things like that and i'll get into that sort of as the part two of this but for this if you don't have a horse that can run fast enough and you have no reason to believe they're going to run faster today it makes it a little bit difficult to make a case for a horse like that now obviously the rules are a little different with inexperienced horses or horses that have only you know they're coming off of layoffs or whatever the case may be typically inexperienced horses or young horses they can take those giant steps forward from start one to start two two to three off the layoff and equipment change whatever the case may be so the the smaller the sample obviously the more difficult it is unless you think there's a horse on paper who maybe their career debut let's say charlatan against a group of horses that have never run anything better than a 75 i mean look he's going to need to regress pretty significantly and somebody else is going to need to run out of their skin to make up that difference if it were i'm again i'm just hypothetically saying a 30 point differential those are the biggest pieces if you're someone that just wants to look at the page you go to the racetrack you buy the racing form and you're just going through doing it that way those to me are the biggest pieces personally i think jockey is overrated for the most part i think people put way too much stock into it i think for the most part these men and women that do this as far as riding is concerned i think for the most part they know what they're doing um and i think it's especially sort of a mitigated piece when you're dealing with a colony like new york or florida this time of year or southern california where you kind of have the best of the best now there are certain writers that do certain things better than others and you'll only figure that out in time but i think for the most part the rider component is is the most over used or over i don't say overused it's it's the most it's given more time than it should be in my opinion trainer i think is very important especially when you do this long enough you start to know what certain trainers are good at and what they're not not just by looking at the raw numbers at the bottom of whatever pps you're you're looking at some trainers can get a little bit sneaky as far as placement for horses and reasoning for them to go in there and i guess that brings me to the bigger piece for any kind of handicapping whether you're someone that uses tape which i'll talk about in a second or you use charts and all that kind of stuff or you just do the the cold dope why is this horse here today that should always be a question asked when you're going through a race if it's a race of a field of you know five maidens from making it up well the reason they're all here is because they've never won a race before and they need to get through it if you're looking at a let's say a grade three with these three year olds uh this time of year why is this horse running here when in theory they're fast enough to be getting ready for a race like i i'm making it up the the kentucky derby you know if there was a horse that had derby points but they showed up in the lexington uh the week before that that should at least raise some sort of a flag with you saying you could have run in the biggest race there is for three-year-olds and instead you're here why should i always ask why why are certain horses running in certain spots i think you'll glean a lot from that sort of exercise if you've never done it now the other pieces i do i try to put as much together as possible i'm a big replay fan now the problem is it's rather time consuming especially if you're watching more than one or two replays if you go through and you're really doing the deep dive watching replays is a rather time consuming exercise i think it is infinitely valuable though because for a number of reasons you get to see what a horse typically looks like whether it's you know how they typically move or you know do they typically wash out leading into a race or is this sort of an anomaly where all of a sudden this afternoon they're a sweaty mess that's not a good sign for me the lead changes when you watch the tape and you get a sort of let's say you get a baseline let's say this horse is the consummate professional changes leads on cue all that kind of stuff and then all of a sudden you watch the most recent replay and they do something that they've never done before either they pop to their left lead or they don't change leads or whatever it may be that to me is a red flag and that's something that could perhaps help me this time around for this race today where the folks that didn't watch the tape they're not going to know that because they're just going to see what the numbers look like so that i feel like that gives me a little bit of an edge perhaps over whatever portion of the population didn't do that extra work you also have to factor in looking at charts and things of that nature so i had some folks uh both for the um excuse me for the uh risen star as well as this past weekend at gulfstream talking about biases i go through look at the charts look at the replays i see no bias at either racetrack uh i i obviously went over it a few episodes ago with the risen star day but as far as gulfstream was concerned on saturday horses were making up ground from all over the place on the main track and it's it becomes a crutch people look at it and say i think i think it becomes an excuse if you don't like the winner or you pick the wrong horse and they don't run well i think people just immediately because they don't like to be wrong look at it and say oh it must have been the racetrack well or or you just happen to have a bad pick and it happens to all of us guess what much more often than not i mean we all pick a lot of losers that's the nature of this game so when i hear people say oh well it's a conveyor belt a gulf stream like no not really if you go back and you look at all the races the horses that won that were out there on the front or forwardly placed they all made sense that's their running style they go and again as i've said in the past speed on dirt that's what you want you don't want to have to come from 50 out of it having said that some of the races throughout the card uh i believe the hutcheson that was one from a horse coming from dead last yes mr freeze was able to go out there and do his thing but i believe the third place finisher he came back and made up a pretty good amount of ground the two phillies in the uh the devona dale they went 1-2 for the most part but they were the two favorites in the race so that doesn't mean all of a sudden that it's a conveyor belt and if you go through and you just listen to narratives and social media and things like that you could go back and look at the chart work right now and think that i'm wrong but that's the difference between us where from a handicapping standpoint you can hopefully use that to your advantage and say bernier doesn't know what he's talking about there was a significant bias that day or i can look at it and say i have an advantage on this person whoever's handicapping it thinking that there was a bias when i don't believe there was so these are all things where again chart work is is not the most time consuming you can be able to go through and and crank through a set of charts relatively quick and start to draw some conclusions i think charts are a nice supplement to the replays because then you can also see not only is it a sort of you know if we're trying to figure out if it's a speed friendly track or whatever the case may be you go back and you watch the tape you can see are they down on the rail are they toward the outside of the track is there some sort of an a path balance uh you know where you want to be on one part of the racetrack as opposed to the other you can get a little bit of that from chartwork but it just becomes much clearer when you look at it from a tape standpoint so there are all these different things um again it's an imperfect science you can do a crazy amount of work and look i've i've had to change my philosophies for a number of different things throughout the years depending on what the what my job sort of necessitates you know it's one thing if i if i'm only looking at stakes races for the upcoming weekend i can do the full-blown dive and go through charts and watch three or four replays of their most recent races for each horse in the race but when i've got to look at 22 races tomorrow and then 24 more the next day and 23 more the next day i can't possibly go through and look at all those replays you got to start to find a sort of you're going to have to use some of those sort of staples and then from there when you find a horse that you think is a little interesting then you go back do some more of the work you know whether it is charts whether it is replays any of that kind of stuff so there's so much that goes into it pace makes the race if if you can't determine the pace or you have some sort of an idea how it's going to go boy you are really swimming upstream at that point that it's gonna make it very very difficult to to handicap anything uh but from there sort of the old standbys class the class is a little bit subjective i think anybody that looks at it and says it says g1 next to this horse's name and they're running into g2 this must be class relief well that doesn't necessarily mean that that's how it works because if the field that ran in that grade one was not truly grade one caliber but they were more let's say grade three caliber there's a scenario and i know that's not a likely situation but there's a scenario where this grade two may actually be more difficult than the grade one that you're exiting so the only way you're gonna know that is going back into a tool like formulator or stats lens or any of these other pieces where you can go in and say well what did the horses coming out of this race go and do next you know was this a maiden race that came back incredibly live with a bunch of next out winners and you know what this horse may have finished sixth but boys took on a heck of a lot harder company that he's gonna face here this afternoon and maybe at seven or eight to one has a big chance or did all the horses exit this race and regress 10 to 15 points that's aggressive they usually don't go that there are times though put it this way when horses can come out of races and they will all regress and if that's the case then i look at that as an opportunity to say this horse chances are against this field gonna get over bet based on the fig that they earned in that most recent run and that most recent run has not come back strong so there are so many different pieces to the handicapping puzzle and some people didn't make a difference to them just give me the fastest last out race and we'll go from there to each their own i hope that helped a little bit nancy thank you for the question thank you for the comment thank you for listening and watching otherwise i think that's going to button things up here and again please continue on with the questions the comments whatever it may be beneath the video player on youtube or to me on twitter at bernie or underscore matt i am all ears and i like this this aspect of it and i wish i had done it more with the first iteration of the show i i like that this is a thing and i'm hopeful that it continues but it'll only continue if i can get that kind of feedback and that sort of uh back and forth between the listeners viewers and myself too so thank you all for doing so if you watch on youtube thank you please rate review and subscribe whether it's on youtube uh whether it's over on in the money uh whether it's on apple podcast wherever you're listening to this thing again it's real simple rate review subscribe a thumbs up on youtube goes a long way make sure the bell icon is lit up and and any reviews and sort of positive ratings are always greatly appreciated and if there's anything specific you'd like to hear more of less of whatever it may be please let me know again you know where to find me at bernie or underscore matt or on the youtube channel so thank you again for listening and watching this has been episode four of the matt bernier show i am off to los angeles on wednesday i will be on the morning line on tvg thursday friday and sunday and i will be on trackside live maybe we take it out of the morning line i don't know on saturday from i believe noon to 3 or 3 30. these are obviously west coast times so factor that in wherever you're listening or watching if you're on the east coast of the west coast so i will be out with tvg for the upcoming week leaving on wednesday but i'll be back here next monday for episode 5 of the matt bernier show until then best of luck however you play whatever you play and wherever you play

Channel: In The Money Media Network

Views: 881

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Id: IWteaq4_xWQ

Length: 52min 20sec (3140 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2020