He ran 4th in the SA Derby, not bad, considering General Challenge was a monster in California.

Not better, but not worse either, they are both the same in the criteria that would be used for HOY...

That's exactly my point to mindlessly write off Charismatic, without looking at how close they really were, is revisionist.

I like to bring some reality to the situation...

Afleet Alex was a much better horse than Flower Alley. They weren't even in the same league. AA was amazing. Did you not see the time of the work off of that huge layoff just before they officially retired him? By God, that horse could run. There is no doubt in my mind that AA would have won the BC Classic had he run. He would have ran right by those two because Ritchey and Jeremy finally figured the horse out. If they would have figured out the horse one race sooner, we would be looking at a TC winner.

I don't agree, Jessica. TIME in a work means little... it's HOW the horse worked. I don't think AA would have come close to St. Liam.

St. Liam was so obviously a dog because he managed to only lose to Ghostzapper - another obvious nag - by a neck in the Clark in 2004.

Okay this is where you are wrong. They are not "the same in criteria that would be used for HOY." You act like the # of graded stakes wins is the ONLY criteria they use. It isn't. They also consider other things and in ALL of those other things Smarty Jones beats Charismatic. I am not saying that Charismatic didn't deserve HOY in '99, or that he wasn't a good horse or anything like that. At the end of the year they don't simply tally up the graded stakes wins and give HOY to whoever has the most, or declare a 4 way tie if 4 horses have the same number of graded stakes wins. THEY TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION OTHER THINGS!!!!
Finishing second in the Belmont is better then finishing third.
Winning 6 stakes races is better than winning 3.
etc.

If you objectively look at the two horses' entire years, it is kind of silly to say "There is absolutely no difference whatsoever. They both had the exact same year." The only way you can say that is if you look EXCLUSIVELY at their number of graded stakes wins....which doesn't make sense.

I am done with this, believe what you want, but I presented a logical arguement with facts. I liked all 3 horses, in Graded Stakes wins during their 3yo season, they were the same and there's not much seperating all three of them.

Using Eddington and Rock Hard Ten to boost Smarty's TC campaign aren't really helping his case. They didn't come into their own until much later, the horses that Smarty faced weren't too good, w/the exception of Lion Heart who should not have been pushed past 1 1/8 miles (IMO).

Afleet Alex's crop was the weakest I've seen in a LONG time. Flower Alley was the best three year old that year, he just didn't come into his own until later in the year. If Alex had met him later on, I think the results would have been different.

And if I'm not mistaken, Charismatic broke down while he was being pulled up.... Though something could have been wrong in the running I suppose.... He was the best horse to run that year, and had accomplished the most. He got good at the right time.

Smarty didn't win HOY for a few reasons. One, many people were incredibly bitter over her early retirement. The year before Mineshaft retired before the BC and won HOY. I think it created many bitter feelings over horses retiring pre-BC. At the same time, Ghostzapper clearly was the best horse that year, though his campaign was, to put it lightly, pretty lame. 4 races? Very lame indeed. Charismatic's year he was the only horse who really stood out.

Bernardini and Barbaro are both VERY good horses, and it's a real shame we never got to see what could have happened in the Preakness had Barbaro remained healthy. I think it would have been a real race to the wire. They would have known they were in a fight, but I think Bernie may have had the edge, though Barbaro may have just been coming into his own...

Think the only thing I would add is that again, just because three horses win the same two races doesn't not mean at all that the three horses are similar in ability.

Smarty Jones was one of the BEST three year olds I have ever seen. The horse was fantastic out of the gate... Had the speed to get a good stalking position, had a very high cruising speed. And most importantly to go with all this talent, had a ton of heart. The Belmont was flat out the pinnacle of this horses career. Double teamed by two very, very good horses and he still barely gets beat. Unbelievable. Smarty ran against a very good group of 3 yo imo. Amazing animal visually in stride. Because he does not have the breeding of Bernardini, and the awesome conformation of a horse like Point Given or Fu Peg, he is not considered as highly as he should. All you have to do is watch Smarty run and it says it all.
AA was not as talented but had every bit the heart. I believe the level of horses AA ran against did not match up at all with Smartys Group. Flower Alley may flatter AA. But I dont really consider this comparison valid because the horses have changed so much from 3 to 4 years old.

Smarty was beat pretty good in the Belmont... Silver Charm and Real Quiet were barely beat, but a length or two is more than barely beat, IMO. If he'd have kept a cool head I think he'd have had it though.

As for his conformation and breeding, I don't see the problem. He has a pretty nice pedigree, albeit he doesn't have the distance in his blood that Bernardini has.... And as for his conformation, I dont'see any problems there either. For a quarter horse anyway.....

He's a crooked horse...

Smarty never gave up in the Belmont. He kept his form even though he was defeated. Birdstone did not run away from him after an utterly cruel 10f for Smarty. The horse was shaking in the stall afterwards and could barely stand. It was an absolutely amazing defeat in my eyes.
I dont really consider the lengths between horses in many races. I have seen horses win by a half a length that were by far the best and pulling away after not having been touched. I have seen horses win by 6 that are absolutely falling apart the last furlong.

Oh I agree, he was amazing in his defeat. He ran a winning race the whole way. He ran a better 10 furlongs than he did in the derby. He showed us the kind of heart he has, and I appreciated him more for it. He would have been a TC winner the next year, easily.

There are a lot of other stallions out there w/far worse problems than him.... Ghostzapper for example....

I'm sure that there are, but I wouldn't breed my mare (if I had one) to a single one of them. I think it's detrimental to the thoroughbred breed by encouraging crooked horses by over breeding to unconformed stallions (Storm Cat for example.)

Okay I am done with it too. I think your position is completely illigoical but I haven't been able to talk you out of it so there is not a lot more to be said. I will simply conclude this discussion by pointing out that I never said that there was a LOT seperating them. You are right that Smarty Jones's year was not miles better than Charismatic's, but it certainly was better, and there is really no way to logically dispute that.
Oh well, Good discussion.
I hope to agrue with you again someday......

AMEN!!! It KILLS me to see some of the horses that are being bred these days. The aweful feet ALONE would be enough to make me not take my mare to them. Don't they realize they are just killing the breed?
I don't see why anyone would take their mares to such fragile stallions as Candy Ride, Ghostzapper, and Vindication. Yes, they were fast. Yes, they have nice pedigrees. But come on! What good is all of that if their babies break down before they even get a chance to run???

I agree completely, although I've never seen GZ close up. Does he have terrible feet?

I havn't seen him up close either, but I've heard he has pretty darn bad feet. And I know that the reason he was campaigned so lightly was due to his fragility.

Why would you breed you mare to that???

If Perfect Drift had some sperm. That would be my choice. As far mares which I feel are more important for stamina (and I have a real genetic basis for this belief, not dosage points) I would have to rely on the masses to educate me. Perfect Drift's seconditis is behavioral.

That's a good point, everyone puts a lot of emphasis on the stallion, but mares really do have more to do w/the outcome than the stallion does. A good mare will do well regardless of who she goes to. Dear Birdie for example has 11 winners from 11 foals of racing age, she has only visited the same stallion on one occasion (Proper Reality).

I do think that distance ability comes from the mare, but if you're considering soundness, I believe it's a 50/50 deal. I still don't think I'd take my chances on breeding to a crooked horse.

Agreed!!!!!!

I don't know though, there are plenty of crooked horses that make darn good runners!

Unfortunately, they don't last.

Exactly, the horse worked phenomenally off of that layoff. Time does matter coupled with the horse's precociousness, power, and movement. Speed is everything in this game. It was too fast and too good-looking. Something was bound to go wrong, and it did. It was sort of like Bellamy Road's Travers performance. It was too much too soon. AA would have ran by St. Liam. I've said that many times before and that is honestly my opinion.

St. Liam was by far from being a nag. St. Liam was awesome. This is an invalid arguement because Commentator, as well as others, also beat St. Liam. Also, St. Liam's performance against GZ that day was not as good as it seems. GZ was in the deepest part of the track, and as far as ability goes, St. Liam didn't even come close to GZ. No horse that I have ever seen live had GZ's talent, with maybe the exception of a few who are currently running. We'll find out about them when their careers are over.

Afleet Alex also had a lot more talent than some of you realize. He was a darn good horse that had the best kick I have ever seen. He looked like he had been shot out of a cannon when he turned it on. The horse was really as good as his times showed in the Arkansas Derby and the Mountain Valley Stakes. They were for real, and the horse was fast. He proved it in the last quarter of the Belmont Stakes after a grueling TC campaign, and after almost being knocked off his feet in the Preakness three weeks before. Not many horses could have won the Belmont under those circumstances.

Here is what bothers me about Alex.... Whenever he would unleash his stunning move he made the horses near him look like they were standing still. The reason is they pretty much WERE! He passed horses that didn't want any part of 1 1/4 miles let alone 1 1/2 in the Belmont. Every time I watched him run the race fell apart around him.
I don't mean to knock Alex because I did like him, however I don't htink he is the super horse that so many were trying to turn him into...

And honestly, if I were you I wouldn't put that much stock into the near knockdown. It looked very dramatic, however he lost NO momentum off of that stumble.

Sarcasm, my friend, sarcasm.

I have to disagree on the last part. It's not the momentum that's impressive -- it's the recovery. That near knockdown would have been the end of many horses who aren't fortunate enough to be so agile. The fact that he still came back to run in the Belmont after that is what amazes me -- there's no way that fall shouldn't have torqued his back, and if it didn't, then that little colt has one hell of a body.

Then I guess you ingnore the final quarter mile time in his Belmont, and his stakes record in the Mountain Valley, and his superb time in the Preakness with the stumble, as well as the Arkansas Derby. I know it is silly to compare times between different tracks and between days and years, but a horse that wasn't talented couldn't have run like that four different times like that.

I ride horses in real life, and I'm telling you that as dramatic as that stumble was, at most he lost a couple 10th's of a second. And that is at the VERY most.

I never said the horse wasn't fast, he was, but he was no super horse. And of course that last 1/4 in the Belmont was blazing, the race fell apart! Did you see the final time???

Again, I don't mean to knock Alex, he was a very nice colt, however, if he'd have run the year before, or the year after, I don't know that he would have fared so well. He would not have defeated Barbaro or Smarty in the Derby, he DEFINATELY would not have defeated Bernardini in the Preakness, and I'm not sure he'd have got Smarty either. In the Belmont.... Well, maybe running against a stronger pace....

Gee, like I haven't been riding horses my entire life even since before I could walk? Afleet Alex did lose a little momentum in the Preakness. His striding was compromised, and anytime a horse's striding is compromised, they lose momentum. You could see him really digging his hind legs up under him and pushing off of them with all his might to get his momentum all the way back up to the way it was before the incident. That is why it took him a distance to get by Scrappy T. In fact, I think both of the horses' momentums were compromised. I don't know by how much it would have affected the final time, but I do know the final time would have been faster. With that being said, it wasn't the momentum that the horse lost that was impressive. It was the fact that he recovered at all. 999 out of 1000 horses would have fallen. Although he doesn't have the prettiest conformation, that was one of the most athletic horses that I have ever seen. Was Alex a superhorse? No, he wasn't, at least, not at that stage of the game. However, there was every indication that he was improving including his gain in weight and height after his injury and the final workout off of the long layoff before he was officially retired.

Also, regarding the final time, it wasn't AA's fault that the horses in front of him went so slow in the opening quarters of the Belmont. The little horse did what was asked of him, and that was to annihilate them. He really put on a show. His Preakness time was very good even with the incident.

No, he wouldn't have Barbaro in the Derby. Of course, Barbaro was one nice horse. AA would have given Smarty Jones a run for his money in the Arkansas and the Preakness though, and maybe even the Derby. The race completely fell apart in AA's Derby, so it is very hard to compare the two. However, the race in the Preakness was more toward Alex's real ability rather than the Derby and the Belmont because, like you said, both of those races comepletely fell apart. As far as AA beating Bernardini...NO WAY, but then again I don't think any horse could have beaten Bernardini in the Preakness in this millenium. I think Bernardini is the next great one.

That's not the way I remember it. The 2 horses were right next to each other (and both very wide) for the last half of the race. If one was in the "deepest part of the track", then so was the other.

If there is a reason to think St Liam's performance wasn't as good as it seemed, it would be because he was leaning on GZ for most of the stretch. Personally, I don't buy that. It was an outstanding performance by 2 superb horses. If I remember correctly, they both earned 114 BSF's that day. But with the wide turn they ran, the adjusted fig was probably as good as GZ's 120's in other races.

--Dunbar

I don't know, I still think we're looking at a glorious time for the Preakness if the Scrappy T incident doesn't happen last year. I mean, seriously, normal horses don't make the move that Afleet Alex did on the turn at Old Hilltop.

Yeah, he ran a mere 23 times

Canonero II, (1968-1981), was a champion thoroughbred race horse.

Bred by Edward B. Benjamin in Kentucky, the bay colt was born with a noticeably crooked foreleg, and as such was considered to have no future in racing. He was sold as a yearling for a mere $1,200 at the Keeneland auction. Purchased by Edgar Caibett, the horse was shipped to his native Venezuela where it earned an undistinguished record racing as a two-year-old.

How many in RECENT times have ran more than a handful of times? (And we're not talking about an exception to every rule as the horse you stated above was an exception to the rule.) And secondly, would YOU as a responsible breeder ever want to encourage a horse to be born crooked if it was BETTER for the horse to be born with straight legs?

You always try to get me going... :p

I get history lessons daily from Damascus'67....so long story short you're right about the last part, :D

I don't know, wasn't old Seabiscuit renowned to be as crooked as can be?