Mark Cramer
C & X Report

C&X STAKES WEEKEND, 2 july 05
SUBURBAN HANDICAP
If you look at Funny Cide's horse-for-course and horse-for-distance record, plus his fine breezing works, he looks like a most-likely winner. And he probably is!
However, let's analyze this race on the basis of form cycle.
FC has the Brad Free sign of weakening form: a failure in recent races to show customary early speed. No surprise if he wins as the favorite, but let's look deeper.
Notice that14May04, Offlee Wild broke his nw2 at BEL with a 100 Beyer, and then, next time out, defeated Funny Cide by a nose.
Now, notice that RECORD BUSTER has also broken his nw2 at BEL, same distance, as a big win horse (vs. a poor field), with a 102 Beyer. So we can compare the scenario of those two races.
The question is, does RECORD HUNTER have the right to improve in the same way that Offlee Wild did? By the James Quinn method in the Handicapper's Condition Book, RECORD HUNTER should have more right to improve than Offlee Wild, because Offlee Wild broke his nw2 in his third try while RECORD BUSTER broke it in his first try.
That puts RECORD BUSTER in the hunt, though we must grant FC the plus that the Suburban is at his favorite distance.
Either Offlee Wild hated the Pimlico surface or he too may be on a decline, since he had fired fresh after a layoff in his three previous Lay-1s before failing at Lay-1 at Pimlico.
Pollard's Vision is a hard knocker whose highest two peak performances have both been at Hawthorne. His handlers have opportunistically shopped around for the easiest pickings with the highest purses. Neither Evening Attire or Sir Shackleton have shown early speed of late.
Tap Day is an angle horse, with a pattern match of Big-win following lay-off and win again next time out. But he has no credentials from his graded stakes tries and his trainer's ROI in stakes is not at all good.
Back to RECORD BUSTER, the golden question is, can he stretch out to 1 1/4. There are several arguments in his favor. (1) His stretch from sprint to route was an improve. (2) He's got the highest Tomlinson stamina number in the field. These are thin arguments, both of which have flaws. But argument (3) looks more attractive. If indeed he's catching a bunch of good but not great horses who are not at their peaks and who have not shown great early speed, he could have it all his own way from the rail in a race that starts on a turn. If he breaks cleanly, and there's no evidence he cannot, then he should be able to slow down the early pace from the front.
Still, we're asking an unseasoned horse to stretch out a good deal of terrain, with a number of rivals that can track close on their best days. Some of the best Stronach horses have been lightly raced with huge win percentages, as exemplified by Awesome Again. With lightly raced undefeated horses there is always great margin for improvement.
RECORD BUSTER is thus my key horse.
PS. Offlee Wild showed amazing improvement when he went into the Dutrow barn. Some supertrainers with "political" problems usually see their horses decline, and we only have circumstantial evidence to allow for guessing why.
AMERICAN OAKS, SoCal, Sunday
This race is chocked full of rich angles and the fave, a Frankel horse, is no slouch, so it's tough to go beyond a speculative opinion. I have an angle on one of these horses, the Japanese invader, CESARIO. I checked with a former partner-owner of Cesario's dam, and the dam was a real stayer, out of Sadler's Wells. There's a pattern developing. In the recent French Oaks, an unknown (to me) Japanese jockey was flown into France to ride a huge longshot and finish third in an excellent field. In last year's American Oaks, a Japanese filly finished a strong second.
Yuichi Fukanaga, CESARIO's rider, is third in the Japanese rider standings, and has won four grade 1s. CESARIO just won the Japanese Oaks at the same 1 1/4 as Sunday's race.
As I say, this race is deep in angles, and we can make arguments for a number of the horses, including the Frankel fave. CESARIO has drawn a poor outside horse. Still, I think she can make an impact in the exotics, at a price, and maybe win.
UNITED NATIONS-MONMOUTH, Saturday
One reader e-mailed me that it might rain at Monmouth, but another said no. I've never done well trying to incorporate weather forecasts, but the favorite here, BETTER TALK NOW, has raced by far his best when the turf course was moist, including his BC-Turf win. REQUEST FOR PAROLE won this same race last year and it looks like a pattern match with second after a layoff, but trainer Hough tells us the horse was very sick, and hence his long stay away from the races, and that he would have wanted to put another race into this horse before this big race. COOL CONDUCTOR seems to race best with recency and has more than 5 weeks off. SILVERFOOT loves to win and is dangerous here, but seems a notch below the fave and his trainer has a poor graded stakes record. I'm intrigued by Frankel's Brazilian horse, LICENSE TO RUN, who lost by a head to Megahertz, defeating Better Talk Now. That race was following a layoff and so is today's race. License to Run is 1 for 1 with Patrick Valenzuela. Then you have Frankel's EXTERIOR, who has won his last two following layoffs and there's a pattern match today with Lay-1. Santos leaves Funny Cide for this one. I love Exterior's big wins in Europe.
Frankely, I cannot separate these two horses. I'll go out out on a limb by giving a slight betting edge to LICENSE TO WIN, only because he overachieved versus today's fave Better Talk Now, while EXTERIOR was twice beaten favorite and his win came at 4/5. So the key here is LICENSE TO RUN.
Wish it was easier but you take what you can get. These are all contentious races with several possible outcomes, and I didn't even mention NAVESINK RIVER, whose only recent win came at our expense, when he caught our 6-1 Quest Star by a half length in the final yards. If he comes back to a firm turf course, he's dangerous.
It was not possible to eliminate more than half the field in any of the three mentioned races, so it's a weekend that seems more like the commodities exchange than the stock exchange.