The weighting in the Fourstardave is some of the worst I have ever seen. There is simply no excuse for not having Wise Dan as the highweight. As a track handicapper, you can't be so mechanical about weighting horses. I guess what the guy is thinking is that Data Link (121 lbs) and Get Stormy (120 lbs) are both grade I winners on turf, while Wise Dan (119 lbs) is just a grade II winner on turf. But as every involved racing fan with half a brain and a fully functioning set of instincts knows, Wise Dan is twice the horse that Data Link is. (He is also twice the horse Get Stormy was at Get Stormy's zenith, which is over a year's past). Can't this track handicapper read the racing form? Or better yet, couldn't he actually follow racing and make critical assessments as campaigns develop, and then file them away for later use?
Poor Wise Dan, who's a question mark on the turf: in his first race on the surface, the 2011 Firecracker, he had failed to hit the board in his three previous starts, leading him to go off at 14-1. But he won the race hands down by almost 3 lengths.
Following a half-length win in the Presque Isle Mile on synthetic, he ran 1 1/4 lengths behind Get Stormy and 1 3/4 behind Gio Ponti in the Shadwell Turf Mile.
Then he got really good, with wins of 4, 3 3/4, and 10 1/2 in the Fayette, Clark, and Ben Ali, but it wasn't because he got off the turf! After all, he had been off the board three straight times at the beginning of the year on the same surfaces (Keeneland synthetic and Churchill Downs dirt) where he did his Best Pal impression.
Presumably, the handicapper has the approproiate respect for Wise Dan's current form. If he really wasn't as solid on turf, wouldn't he have run in the Whitney, where he could have perhaps put his connections in position to win the award for champion dirt horse, rather than running for two-thirds the money in a grade II?
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