Too bad
 

Will always remember the duel with Sun King at the Spa last year when he won the Whitney. :That was one exciting race....

PSH

Well, at least I don't have to stress about how to sneak out of setting up for my friend's engagement party so I can get to Belmont in time for the Suburban.

:( :( :( :( : I'd rather have stressed. Ah well. It was fun while it lasted. Thanks Invasor. You're still da beeeeessssst...

Wow! I can't believe it. I was out-of-town yesterday and just read about this now. That really sucks. He was a good one, and I don't think it is too much of an exaggeration to say that the handicap division is a complete joke now without him.

What about Lava Man? And Flashy Bull and Papi Chullo have improved leaps and bounds in recent weeks.

I'd prefer to say the division is wide open. Papi Chullo is passing on the Suburban but it still has a great field with Corinthian and Sun King and more.

welcome to the board Rollo.

Lava Man can win the BCC.....in 2008 when it's at Santa Anita.

you're using these horses to argue that the handicap division isn't a joke?? :D

lava man will be a force out west, but that's it. hate to think tho that flashy bull and papi are the best we have to look forward to.

maybe sun king will finally get his gr 1. joy

I have to disagree with you on a couple of fronts here.
1) I don't think Flashy Bull has improved "leaps and bounds" in recent weeks. Over two months ago he stalked some allowance horses and pounced on them on the turn to win and post a 105 Beyer Speed Figure. Then in the Foster he did the same thing........and posted another 105. In between those two races, he defeated the mighty Hesanoldsalt by a head while actually getting weight from Old Salty that day. He is a decent horse, but I just don't see any real improvement over the last two months.
2) Lava Man? He has a very good career in SoCal, but he has never been able to win outside of that place, and the fact that he lost his most recent start there MIGHT indicate that he is begining to slip a little.
3) Papi Chullo? No.

I agree with Danzig in that pointing to these three as the examples of why the handicap division is not a joke, isn't particularly convincing in my opinion.

I was so bummed when I heard that on Sunday -- he was just a few big wins away from being our richest racehorse ever :(

Enjoy him at his best!!!

Sun King could get a gr 1 in an extended sprint, but he's an ordinary bridesmaid around two turns. Too bad the Forego and Vosburgh are no longer 7 furlongs.

Flashy Bull couldn't find the winner's circle at all last year, so the mere fact he's strung a few wins together this year suggests he's improved. He's a typical mismanaged colt that was repeatedly run over his head while still holding allowance conditions last year. Had they let him develop properly last year, he might already have been a top horse in the division at the start of the season.

Papi Chullo is an even more extreme example of a mismanaged horse, perhaps one of the worst in history. As a maiden he finished second in the Sham, a gr 3 at Santa Anita over 9 furlongs. In that race, he finished ahead of future Derby winner Giacomo amongst other future stakes horses. Now that he's in much more sensible hands, maybe we'll get to see the full potential of a horse who was always meant to be a good one. Hopefully, at age 5, its not too late, and certainly his last two place him several lengths above second tier stakes horses like Hesanoldsalt and AP Arrow.

I think Lava Man is on the decline, too, but still, given his race record and Beyer figures, you have to consider him a real beast. Honestly, I think the Stud TNT horse is going to dethrone him Saturday, and will be a major player the rest of the year.

The Forego is 7F.

I wish the Jockey Club GC was still 2 miles. And I wish the Marlboro Cup was, well, anything at all. Those were the days. The summer handicaps and then the fall weight for age races.

No where near the magnitude of losing Invasor in McLaughlin's stable, but the DRF says Jazil was also sent home to Shadwell for x-rays.

http://www.drf.com/news/article/86102.html

Nicholas Godfrey of the racingpost pretty much sums up the way I felt about the horse..as below..
INVASOR'S career-ending injury has robbed the racing world of the most admirable of performers, a poster horse for devotees of international racing who brought courage and tenacity to match his obvious class.

Thanks to his typically gutsy Dubai World Cup win, Hamdan Al Maktoum's colt stood undisputed as the world's number one racehorse when injury struck.

Invasor had been de facto world champion according to official rankings ever since his Breeders' Cup Classic victory. Yet while he was also named US horse of the year at the Eclipse awards, it wasn't until that valorous effort in Dubai that his talents were truly appreciated by a wider audience.

That's because he was an overpowering grinder rather than a thrusting rapier. Invasor seldom won by ‘daylight' margins – but just try getting the better of him in a head-to-head.

The official handicappers certainly liked Invasor in 2006, when, by virtue of his emphatic Breeders' Cup victory at Churchill Downs, he was awarded the top rating of 129 at the World Thoroughbred Racehorse Rankings.

While I wouldn't argue that he was flattered by that figure, Invasor was reviled in some quarters largely because of whohe was not. He was not Deep Impact, nor Discreet Cat.
I still maintain that the great Japanese turf horse Deep Impact should have been rated above Invasor in 2006 thanks to his peerless domestic form.

But among dirt horses, Invasor surely deserved his status. When Discreet Cat ran away with last year's UAE Derby, Invasor was undercooked in fourth, given an easy ride stones below his best on what was to be the only defeat in a 12-race career. It would be fatuous indeed to use this as any indication of the merits of the pair.

Ditto this year's Dubai World Cup, when Discreet Cat ran no sort of race, and was later found to be injured. In his absence, Invasor ground out his final gritty success, this time overcoming the talented Premium Tap, who simply couldn't resist the unstoppable force ranged alongside him.

Make no mistake: this was a brilliant racehorse who, having been bred in Argentina, went on to become a Group or Grade 1 winner on three continents.
Plucked from the relativeobscurity of Uruguay, where the son of Candy Stripes was a Triple Crown winner, he joined trainer Kiaran McLaughlin in Dubai. After the UAE Derby, he was never beaten again, running up a sequence of six top-level successes under his teenage Panamanian rider Fernando Jara.

Although he scored by more than four lengths when slamming rivals in last year's Suburban Handicap, the trademark Invasor performance was usually more workmanlike in nature.

He went from strength to strength in America's top racesfor older horses, winning the historic Pimlico Special and the Whitney, where he overcame adversity to nose out Sun King, before his unforgettable victory over the immense talent of Bernardini at the Breeders' Cup.

Two outings this year only added to Invasor's reputation as the toughest of nuts. First he kept his unbeaten US record despite clipping heels on the home turn at Gulfstream Park in the Donn Handicap, before being shipped to Dubai and that terrific battle for the world's richest race.

With this year's Triple Crown over, the whole of American racing and beyond was eagerly anticipating this bull of a horse – still only four according to the South American breeding season – getting to grips with the current Classic crop on the dirt.

Instead, he has been retired to stand at Sheikh Hamdan's Shadwell farm in Lexington, Kentucky, for the 2008 breeding season.

“Invasor's unexpected retirement has ripped the heart right out of racing at a time when the sport desperately needs one,” suggested Steve Haskin of theBlood-Horse.

Though his absence will obviously be felt most keenly on the US dirt scene, the world stage as a whole will now be denied one of its brightest stars.

Papi Chullo is in a barn that often has marked improvement when they get a horse, but it rarely lasts. Flashy Bull is better than he was last year, as he should be as a 4 yer old, but I would hesitate to call him much more than fortunate to be in good form in a pitiful year for older horses. Lava Man seems to have lost a step but he really has done enough.

I mispoke there as I had it in my head that it was still 6 1/2 furlongs. Seeing how its on the same day as the Woodward, for the twice the money, and with all the recent hits to the division, it would be a miracle if Nick Zito even gives it a passing thought. Its probably penciled in for stablemate Commentator anyways.

Invasor
 

:( He was a true champion. Took on all comers, Horse racing has taken a big hit with this horses injury,Scat Daddy's injury,and Barbaro's injury and ultimate death.. Still the future looks pretty good w/ the likes of Street Sense,Curlin,
Rags to Riches,etc.. as long as they don't get retired.

I agree..

yep, very good summary.

the author accurately described his style, "an overpowering grinder."

Top 3 horses of the older division @ time of injury was Invasor,Invasor,and Invasor..lol No other horse could run with him,especially at the Classic dist.

No doubt that Invasor was the tops of the division, but I'm not suddenly feeling this gaping hole that's been left in the American dirt racing scene.

If there was a hole, its been there since February. Invasor was slated to make at most 3 more starts. A race like the Dubai World Cup, for all the excitement it generates for a single day, really is a detriment to the season as a whole, as the trip involved usually puts the participants out of commission for a significant period of time whether by design or out of necessity. The race, when you get down to it, is practically a tailored novelty (kind of like Cigar's Citation Challenge in '96) that seeks to be a seasonal championship event just when the racing year is getting warmed up. For the most part, its influence has a negative impact on American racing, either by leading to early retirement or compromising the domestic campaigns in the States of top level horses.

Invasor was going to run in 4 horse fields a couple of more times before attempting a second BC Classic, which would have been his only significant start aside from the Dubai race. But racing is a year long event and really Invasor was not going to play much of a part during the year other than at the bookends. The weight of his absence was already very much in tow even before the injury.

Very good point.

I think that the horses hurt the most are Street Sense and Curlin. I say that because if they were to defeat Invasor or even lose to him in a close race it would give them some historical legitimacy. He was the measuring stick that they could be judged on. Now that he is gone the older horse division is such a wreck that there will always be questions over just how good they were considering they both are very unlikely to run at 4.

You don't think Curlin will?

It also significantly increases the chance they actually run in the BC Classic.

will what?

Why?

run at 4.

I dont believe he will though I have no information, just a hunch. Especially being that he is owned by two of the biggest commercial breeders in the business, one who stands stallions.

Cause lately the top 3yos seem to like to keep the "we could have won the BC Classic if he didn't get some fluke injury" myth going. Unless they think Street Sense has a legit shot in the Classic they will find an excuse to not run him and keep him as the first horse to win the BC Juvenile and Kentucky Derby that "would have won the Classic if he didn't get hurt". I don't think any of the top 3yos were looking forward to clashing with Invasor. Now I am sure they are licking their chops at taking on the remnants of the Classic division.

What three year olds skipped the Classic?

Which top ones have actually run? Yeah, there were a lot of legit reasons among them (although I will still never believe Bluegrass Cat's injury) but who knows how many of those "legit" reasons wouldn't have quickly become non-issues if the top runners in the Classic division were running 105-107 Beyers? I mean heck, we haven't even had a Derby winner run in the Traver's since 1995.

The current trend in the breeding industry which baffles me is that a loss will destroy the value of a stallion prospect. Everyone wants to sell their stallions on a combo of what they've done and what they could have done. No one wants to take the chance of actually finding out what they could have done. This is why I think the top 3yos went from doubtful/questionable to come back to probable. None of them wanted to really find out if they could have beat Invasor. All of them are willing to find out if they could beat Flashy Bull.

Ugh... Bluegrass Rat. :rolleyes:

Bluegrass Cat was not going to be sold. His stud fee would be the same regardless of where he finished in the Classic unless he won or ran a good second. Afleet Alex had a legit injury, Smarty Jones had a legit injury, who else skipped the Classic?

Jazil? LMAO

His win destroyed his stud value

couldn't disagree more.
Invasors departure leaves a huge hole this year in my mind. he wasn't only at the top of the division, he was a horse with rare qualities.
the campaign for this years breeders cup classic seems much less exciting to me now. the possibility of Invasor running the table two years in a row and repeating in the BCC classic was huge for me and I suspect many others. I was also really looking forward to seeing how this years crop of top three year olds would fare against the big guy this fall.

True, Invasor may have only missed three races due to injury, but for me they were very important and exciting races. By the way, I wouldn't call the races he had on his agenda exactly insignificant. I wanted to see him step up a bit more in the historical sense and a repeat in the BCC would have put him in rare company.
BTW, the Dubai World Cup is not some novelty day of excitement. from a quality standpoint this past DWC was on par with any breeders cup offering. the racing year doesn't warm up at the same time world-wide, there are more than one racing seasons.