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Sat May 3rd, 2025 |
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Ron's Picks
Churchill Downs Race 12
Post Time 5:57 PM CST
Does the best horse always win a race like this? Or does the horse with the best trip often win?
Will the projected blistering early pace actually manifest or will the top trainers and jockeys, who can handicap as well as any of us, decide to lay the horse off that early pace?
With 19 runners, anything can happen.
Buit it would seem likely that the pace will be heated and so have to figure that a runner coming from off the pace will have the advantage.
There are many late runners in here but I keep looking at 18-SOVEREIGNITY. While so many of the closers had blistering early paces to run at (see Arkansas Derby), most of Sovereignity’s races featured paces that were more moderate and he was still able to make up a ton of ground. The big knock on him might be a relative lack of seasoning. However, maybe being somewhat fresh might work to his advantage. 8-JOURNALISM owns good speed but he’s unlikely to get caught up in the rush to the front end. I can see him sitting in fourth or fifth, waiting for the rest of the speed to come back to him. He won his last four races using that scenario. Can’t see his connections changing tactics for this race. Getting the distance is always a concern. While 14-TIZTASTIC seems like a second-tier runner, he is the only one with a win beyond a mile and an eighth and he looked good doing it in the Louisiana Derby.