TENS WILD races tomorrow afternoon at Hawthorne in Race 6. It’s a $16,000 claiming race going a mile over the turf. He drew post 11 and has Denny Velazquez on board. Estimated post time is 4:40 PM Central Time.

As you know, I usually go through horse by horse and give you some thoughts on each and then summarize with how I think we can win. However we have eight of the eleven in this one all coming out of the same race, including us, so there is liable to be a bit too much redundancy! So I’m going to skip ahead to how I think we can win.

This one is going to be tough. It’s not that we’re not qualified to be in this group – we are. We had two things working against us in the last race: the long layoff and the longer race. Now TENS has won at a mile and a sixteenth (he did his first out at Canterbury for the Keen barn) but he had run off a string of three in a row at 7 1/2 furlongs and one race at a mile an 70 yards. That 1/8 of a mile makes a difference and the combination of him not being used to it and the longer layoff taking an edge of his fitness took it’s toll.

Then we drew the 11 hole.

That run to the first turn, especially if he breaks sharply, is going to make it difficult to keep from going 4 or 5 wide through the turn. Conceivably it could keep us wide throughout the race. If Denny can rate him and tuck him inside a bit, we’re liable to be pretty far off the pace and TENS really hasn’t done his best running from that far off the pace.

The last race was a nice tightener for him and fatigue shouldn’t be a problem. The shorter distance is going to help as well. What we never have any way of controlling is racing luck and we’re going to need quite a bit of it coming from the outside.

Last out we got the trip that we wanted but not the result. Maybe this time we won’t get the trip we want but will get the result!

Good luck!