litf gets a lot of attention, winners do that. so does funny cide (not a LOT of wins, but he did win the derby), azeri did as well. none of them were the absolute best. none of them will probably be written of 80 years from now, unlike MOW for instance who just had a new book come out about him.

however, how is any horse getting attention from fans and bettors a BAD THING?! who cares if a bunch of people bet a horse down that may not be GREAT... that helps other cappers get better odds on their picks. who cares if people go goo goo (btw, who cares who came up with that saying?) over a horse that isn't the second coming of dr fager?

i'd imagine that calder appreciated the fact that litf showed the other day, he no doubt helped sell tickets. any horse who captures the fans imagination is a good thing. it's too bad that some are all bent out of shape that these horses get so much support, despite not being THE BEST. of course that is an opinion anyway, who is the best. unless their name was colin or personal ensign, they all lose.

I agree with much of what you say but i doubt the general sports fans have even heard of LITF. He didnt bring any fans to the game.

I thought that this was a forum to discuss horses and their relative merits both good and bad. Saying that he is overrated is not a BAD thing. Discussing it and trying to make points to back your assertion isnt a BAD thing.

The only people on this thread getting bent out of shape are the ones that have no logical points to back their paper champion. The rest of us are just having fun watching it all go down. Enjoy.

Yes, he was going in races where his most likely divisional rivals couldn't run. So what's the point?

Do people simply fail to understand that he was not elected - nor widely trumpeted as - "Champion 3YO Sprinter," in which it would be perfectly acceptable to run all year against 3YOs, but as "Champion Sprinter," an all-age division in which he failed to win a race against any reasonable divisional rival after spending his whole season in races where they couldn't run against him? Oh, sure, he won one open-age race - a race in Northern California written for him about three weeks in advance, for the same day as the Vosburgh and within a week of the Ancient Title (races to which legitimate divisional rivals had already been targeted). If "Champion 3YO Sprinter" existed as a category, I suspect that very few would've had an issue with LITF being elected for it, given his otherwise perfect record on the year. Since there is no reason to believe that he was anywhere near being the best all-ages sprinter - for the reason that he, and the horses he built his reputation running against, did not have success in the all-age races that rightly define the championship of this division - that, IMHO, is the key reason for so much discord on this topic.

On an unrelated topic, I saw in the other LITF thread the "sprinter giving 8+ pounds" excuse as if that's a big deal. It's not. You see it all the time. I could print out a list of dozens of examples from my database of graded stakes races, which is far from complete but still presents plenty of cases. One particular example that's worth giving is a real 3YO sprinter from not all that terribly long ago. Consider Groovy, who, as a 3YO, not only beat older horses in the Tom Fool, Forego and Ancient Title, but gave that much weight or more to some older, stakes-winning rivals in the latter two. I don't remember seeing LITF doing anything like that - and that still wasn't good enough to get Groovy a sprint championship after less of a BC Sprint debacle than LITF had.

I have no problem with what you say here Hoss. He wasnt a fluke. He was a pretty good horse. He was fun to watch and something to get excited about. But then, he proved that he wasnt nearly as good as he was hyped to be.

Surely his accomplishments last year deserve merit if for nothing else but consistency. He was consistently good enough to beat average to bad restricted three year old sprinters. He was consistently fast enough to think that just maybe he could be something special. And now, he has been consistently beaten enough to know that he isnt anything special.

No one ever said he wasnt a decent horse.

[quote= My point was that the horse won 10 straight last year and did it all over the country. Like I said previously I don't particularily care for LITF. Tried to beat him everytime last year, and this year. But I can appreciate a horse who is 11 for 14 lifetime. That's no easy task, and especially in the races he was running in.[/QUOTE]

Did you realize that of all the horses that finished behind Lost in the Fog in any graded stakes race in his career, a grand total of five of them went on to win one graded stakes each (at least through late June), only two of which were even as good as G2s? There have, for the record, been somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 graded stakes races since the date of the 2005 Swale for open gender and 3YOs or 3YOS+. His record is as good as it is only - ONLY - because he was so carefully spotted against weak competition. Next year, the King's Bishop might draw horses who end up sweeping the BC Sprint, but in 2005, the horses who took part in the age-restricted sprint stakes simply weren't very good.

Sure, the connections didn't know that. But they had every reason to believe that these were softer spots than the open-age sprints and they knew that their competition for the sprint championship could not run in the races that they were carefully picking. At what time did they think, or even hope, "We might have the best sprinter in the nation?" At that time, they needed to stop running against 3YOs only and go in the many open-age stakes races to which their colt, and his sprint championship rivals, were all eligible. After that point, all they were doing was padding his record by running against patsies, in places where he was safe from having to face actual divisional rivals - doesn't matter if they shipped him to the moon and back, and issued press releases on where he was going.

I realize, unfortunately, that 20 years has passed since Groovy (a horse I didn't even like at the time) was a 3YO running vs. elders. Unfortunately, I'm 20 years closer to being old! Seriously, for the benefit of more recent arrivals to our sport, there has been continued evolution in that time toward the myth that 3YOs are incapable of running safely and effectively against older horses, a trend which resulted in proliferated opportunities for 3YOs to hide in age-restricted company and gather black type and bloat reputations against their fellows. There is no reason that 3YOs can't run against elders by the summer; the only risk to them is a decent chance of getting beat, because usually, better older horses are superior to better 3YOs. But getting beat is the worst thing in the world in an era which would rather see a LITF running unbeaten against restricted company all season than a horse winning and losing while running against the best of his or her division.

It makes for poor sport and arguments. Had LITF been running against elders all along, he almost assuredly would not have any sort of win streak and we wouldn't all be arguing about it.

Your comment that "he proved that he wasn't nearly as good as he was hyped to be" is not true. Nothing has been proven. You could be right that he wasn't as good as he was hyped to be. That statement may be correct. The part that is not correct is your contention that "it has been proven". Nothing has been proven. Horses are not machines. If Bernardini never runs another good race, does that prove that his Preakness win was not that good? No not all. Maybe he's not the same horse any more. Maybe he's hurt. Horses aren't machines. There have been plenty of really good horses who were good for a year or so and then they lost it. It's usually because of a soundness issue or injury and it happens all the time. If a horse is no longer able to replicate his past form, it does not neccessarily mean that his past form was phony or that his present bad form is due to facing better competition.

No, no...it is just mere coincidence that LITF began not liking tracks and "not being himself" as soon as he started facing open company. Purely coincidence.

You say "its not who you beat". So does that mean competition has no bearing on performance? You never answered me before.

No, I didn't say that. Sometimes it has an impact and sometimes it doesn't. For example, you may see a horse break his maiden first-time out by 4 lengths. In his next start, he runs in a stakes against some a much stronger field and he wins by 5 lengths. I've seen that happen many times. So in that example, the stronger competition did not have an effect on the horse's performances. He stepped up against stronger competition and he ran just as good if not better. So in that case, the competition had no impact on his performance.
Sometimes the opposite happens. Maybe a horse wins easily first-time out and goes wire to wire. Let's say he runs the half-mile in :45 2/5 and gets an easy lead and he wins easily. In his next start, he runs in a stakes race against much better horses where the half is run in :44 1/5. He's not as goos as these horses and he can't run early with them and he gets beat. In this case, the competition and the race set up had a huge impact on performance.
Plenty of horses win by 3 lengths first-time out. I think you need to have a good eye to determine which of these horses are stars and which ones are not. I don't think that simply looking at the fractions or the speed figures will give you this information. You need to have a good eye.

Very well stated.

Hopefully we will have more information when LITF runs again. And I of course hope he does as he is visually very impressive to me.

And as demonstrated by arljim earlier in the thread, this is clearly the case with LITF. You have just made the case. Thank you.

[quote=dalakhani]Why is there so much blind faith in an animal that has proven to be vastly overrated on multiple occasions?

How can you possibly say that LITF was overrated?

Sincerely,

The 2005 USC Football Team


Not to put a damper on this fun thread, but there is so much emotion being used on the words "overrated" in this thread? Just to state the obvious, but "Ratings" are obviously opinions (including those people that voted for the eclipse). People are going to have opinions on both sides of this fence (neither right and neither wrong). I also saw some references in this thread to translating the odds (or lack thereof on Saturday) and translating those odds to how the horse is "rated". For the record LITF has a >+10% ROI (if I did my math correct) which by definition he is underrated (yes I know the argument will be that he would be overrated based on the small sample size of G1/G2 races against older horses). BTW by using this definition there should be a 500 post thread on this board describing how overrated Dubai Escapade is.

[quote=bogeydaman]Dubai Escapade was not compared to the all time greats. Dubai escapade wasnt voted champion anything. Dubai escapade hasnt been hyped to a fraction that LITF has. Dubai Escapades connections and fans didnt invent a bunch of excuses. Dubai Escapade can still atone and i bet she will.

Would you bet LITF will win a g1 before he is done?

[quote=dalakhani] People have made excuses for Dubai Escapade and rightfully so. They say she didn't fire which is absolutely true. I don't know if she would have won or not if she would have fired. I don't really know the filly that well and I'm not that familiar with the fillies she was running against on Saturday.
I do know that she didn't fire though. She didn't even want to switch leads on Saturday which is unusual for her. She stayed on her left lead through much of the stretch. She did eventually switch to her right lead, but she did it much later than normal. There was clearly something bothering her.

Sorry, Hoss ... you must have missed the posts on this thread where I proposed the solution ... that is ...

... that the Eclipse Sprint Award should have been vacated ... that is ... no champion named.

There are years when that's the best solution ... and I argued for it all last Fall. The champion in any division should be a horse who raced well over a substantial portion of the year ... AND ... who somehow demonstrated a reasonably clear superiority to his rivals.

There wasn't an American sprinter last year ... who deserved to carry the glorious word "champion" for all eternity.

Giving it to a horse who may not have even been in the top 10 ... debased the whole meaning of the Eclipse Award.

No, not at all. LITF has proven he can win from off the pace. In addition, LITF has set some blazing early fractions and still drew off and won easily. So he has shown that he can set blazing fast fractions and win and he has shown that he can sit off the pace of fast fractions and win.
I'm not saying your theory is positively wrong. His sub-par performances in his 3 losses could be due to tougher competition on those occasions. Or it may be a combination of tougher competition and the horse not firing to due to physical problems.
Or it may be due almost solely to physical problems.

No ... there doesn't HAVE to be a winner. Vacating the award only strengthens the purpose of the award ... which is to honor the best horse in a division as a "champion."

No sprinter deserved that acclamation last year ... it cheapened the whole meaning of the Eclipse Awards.

And it doesn't matter at all what I think ... the voters should have the option of checking a box which says "No champion" ... and let that be the determinant.

I think that's pretty silly. It's probably less than 50% of the time that there is a clear and obvious winner who demonstrated reasonably clear superiority over their rivals. If we adopted your idea, we would have no winner in half the divisions every year.
Your contention that LITF was not in the Top 10 is absurd. He finished 7th in the BC Sprint. How is not in the Top 10 if he finished 7th in the championship race. If hed terrible Form before the race and finished 7th, you could argue that he wasn't in the Top 10. However, he had great Form going in and was the #1 seed going in. He went off as the odds-on 3-5 favorite that day. Let's say that the fans made a huge mistake in their handicapping and he should have been 5-1 instead of 3-5. That would still put him in at least the Top 7 best sprinters(since he finished 7th) and probably the Top 4 or 5 based on his previous Form. You can't tell me that LITF should have been 40-1 that day. I see fans make mistakes all the time, but I've never seen a horse who should be 40-1 go off at 3-5. If they made mistakes that big you could make millions betting the horses.