when was the last time a horse from Az or New Mexico won a championship?

ah, not so. when azeri shipped to arlington for the bc, and won HOY, people knocked her for not coming east that year.

Agreed. A recent one was the 2004 sprint eclipse where Speightstown won over Pico Central. Pico Central won the vosburgh, carter and Met mile and finished 3rd in the cigar after a long year shipping back and forth. In their lone meeting, Pico Central blew speightstown's doors off in the Vosburgh. Yet, speightstown was named champion sprinter. The rationale at the time? Speightstown showed up on BC day.

Well, sadly, I'm sure some voters view the Vosburgh as some sort of BC "prep" race, the way they would a Derby prep.

In the BC Sprint itself, Speighstown won well clear of runner-up Kela, who sure enough, defeated Pico Central in the Pat O'Brien at Del Mar.

The loss in the Cigar Mile was probably the nail in the coffin.

I hear you. But speightstown's BC victory was his lone grade 1 all year long. Regardless of how the voters viewed the vosburgh, the race really wasnt close and it was at a distance Speightstown was supposed to be better at.

If you took the body of work over the course of a season, it wasnt even close. Pico took victories in Belmont's two biggest sprints of the year and finished a respectable first and third at the big A. Pico roasted Speightstown in their only head to head. How does Speightstown get that award IF you are judging the winner based on what happened over the course of an entire year?

In my view, HOY should be based on the best horse who raced in North America in that year (thats why like KG has said before, I would have liked Ghostzapper to have gotten it off one run in May of 2005). The best assembled horse race of the year was the Classic and Zenyatta won it very very cosily. That was the performance of the year! She deserves the accolade and thats why I voted for her. However, if there was a year for Co-HOYs, this is it. Rachel had a smashing year..

Whatever. That kind of thinking apparently got King Glorious kicked outta here.

"Best assembled"? The BC Classic was nothing more than what would have happened if Derek Jeter, Corey Nakatani, Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders, Kobe Byrant, David Beckham, Tom Brady, and Susan Boyle got to together and had a singing competition.

Z





Nuff said :cool:

I was wrong, I should of said " California Haters" is more like it.

i don't think it's a hatred of one state. zenyatta hasn't gotten any more grief than say...pepper's pride, or hallowed dreams. and no, i'm not comparing them talent-wise!! it's more a desire to see horses run in more than one state, to move outside their comfort zone.. it's a completely different style out there, and no dirt surfaces, and is next to impossible to draw comparisons if a horse only runs out there. a horse, such as rachel, who runs well all over the country except cali should get more respect than one who remains only in cali, right? there's a reason rachel didn't run there, and it's the same reason zenyatta only ran there. artificial surfaces. a comparison of the two has to be done only on what they both accomplished for the year, as any other comparisons would be based on opinion and conjecture.

I love how you sit there and make it sound like California horses never leave the state, when its usually exactly the opposite, they go all the way across country, winning at a pretty good clip on surfaces that are foreign to them, yet you rarely see it in reverse.

If they BC had been at CD she would have been there, the owners support racing, oh maybe you forgot horses like Giacomo and Tiago traveling around the country?

how is my talking of zenyatta not leaving the state this year an indictment of all california horses every year?

its the same argument, every year, every thread, it gets old.

for example, when azeri was up for HOY it was, she had an uninspired campaign, she just beat up on no ones in socal, she did not race at belmont or saratoga..

She raced nine times if I remember correctly though including a win in Chicago.

did I mention the number of races? no, it was the local

it was also "if she wanted to win she should have run in the classic"....thats what you heard around message boards.

So you're bringing up complaints made by basically no one that is on this message board 7 years ago and somehow comparing them to this situation?

NT

which is why i mentioned her, because i thought she did plenty for HOY that year. those who argued she never travelled east were incorrect. altho she didn't go to the east coast, she most certainly did not remain in socal.

Well Armed won most of his money in one of those Mo-Nut-Liquor Countries. That money isn't supposed to be taken into account for this award. The reasons for Volponi n' RP not getting it are obvious. The reason for PP is because he wasn't active at all for long periods of the year (Mineshaft dominated those periods of the year, and got injured right before the B.C.) It's been 6 years now. Hopefully that's accurate......One of the reasons I don't miss the SOCAL dirt tracks is because they tended to get as biased as that Dubai track was that day. Also, horses didn't come back from races (on our dirt) quickly enough to fill fields well. A problem with the synthetic out here(especially Pro-Ride n' Del Mar Poly) is that trainers often bring young horses back too quickly off a nice debut effort on it (#2 be poo.) The chances of that(#2 be poo) are even more increased with those damn incessant 7f maiden races they seemed to be writing at Anita.