Interesting Preakness day for me as I was at a baseball tournament for most of the afternoon. I caught a couple of races early, enough to see that the rail was pretty good, and that helped me to adjust some of my anticipated play.

It led me to adding War of Will into my pick 4 play, which was going to end with Bodexpress and Owendale. Owendale got the heave-ho from the ticket, Bode gave Johnny V the old heave-ho at the gate. Win some, lose some.

The key to the pick 4 was Lexitonian, who I had picked up on from one of the podcasts, pretty sure it was Jonathan Kinchen on the Players’ Pod.

Not a lot of other breakdown of Saturday from me, as the sun glare off the computer screen made it tough to get a good read on the races. I did however, feel like Grantland Rice … well, how I imagine Grantland Rice would have felt, with a double ticket in my pocket while covering the games.

I’m looking forward to the Belmont. This year’s three year old season is going to be rife with betting opportunities with a pretty evenly matched group – I can see between three to five horses all being 4-1 to 6-1 atop the Belmont board, and some of the new shooters and Preakness skippers will be interesting as well.

I might be most proud of picking out War of Will last year in the run up to the Breeders Cup. He didn’t win that day, and there were definite strikes against him in the Kentucky Derby off the Louisiana Derby injury and the inside post – which didn’t turn out to be the traditional undoing, but factored in why he got caught in traffic. Saturday’s Preakness was a classic example of when to grab a good horse at great value – the 6-1 was way too generous – and the situation with the rail draw and tactical speed was a perfect fit. Had I not been at the baseball game and already had a Bode win ticket in pocket, I’d have doubled down on Will.

The Belmont is going to be great… wait until you hear my Tacitus angle !