Excuse me if I'm flaunting my ignorance but what about Ribot? Phar Lap?

Oh and I'm asking as in asking,not making an implication. I honestly want to know where they'd rate.
If anyone else had said that I'd wanna scold them for using that word cause really... it means accepting in spite of dissatisfaction, right?

If I were them I'd rather go to HK. Tougher crowd over there.

Just my stupid opinion. :)

Loved Greinton, but he came up short in the Arlington Million and BC Turf, although he was closing on Teleprompter in the Turf.

Don't forget King Glorious!

I know the track surfaces were insanely fast in Socal around the mid 80s, but in the span of three races, he went a mile on dirt in 132.3, 10f on dirt in 158.2 and then a tough second going 12f on Turf in 225.4. In his next start, he was flying late at Teleprompter in the Arlington Million in what might have been the only ride I ever complained about from Pincay.

My mistake. I meant closing on Teleprompter in the Million.

Finishing second to Zoffany (I think) in that Sunset Hcp cost Greinton a big bonus.

Few other names that came to mind when thinking about horses that were able to win top class races on both surfaces are Blushing John, Hawkster, and Prized. Beating Sunday Silence on dirt and also winning the BC Turf is pretty damn impressive.

King's Island.

Awesome thread! Seriously fun to read about and speculate. Eventhough they've failed miserably trying this in the past year, you can argue the Coolmores have tried with both Daddy Long Legs and So You Think

Coolmore has failed here with a great many superstar Euro turf horses.

Frankel's sire Galileo was an absolute monster on the turf in Europe -- at least he sort of fired here on the dirt ...



Fantastic Light nipped him in the Irish Champions and crushed the field in the BC Turf that year.

A lot of the Coolmore's performed disastrously on dirt. Dylan Thomas (Arc winner) got beat about 45 lengths by Bernardini in the Jockey Club Gold Cup without a visible excuse. Hawk Wing was miserable, etc etc.

I'm on a roll.

me thinks that Beyer was really generous with some of those outrageous numbers some of those guys were given. Either that or he has gotton very stingy with age. Kind of forgot how good Azeri was, Holy Bull too.

The difficulty of attempting the move from America to overseas to capture the mythical title can best be captured by the 5 years old campaign of Aaron Jones's Lemhi Gold. Lemhi Gold was one of the best dual threat handicap horses in the last 50 years of west coast racing. If ever a horse looked like the goods to go overseas and compete with the best on turf, it was Lemhi Gold. He absolutely destroyed Perrault in the 82 San Juan Cap when that was the turf race to win on the West Coast. He went back east that year and won the Sword Dancer. Then he ran on the dirt and won the Marlboro and the Jockey Club, both in handily fashion.
He was sent over to France to prepare for the Arc. He ran last in his frist prep and fourth in his second. He went over to England for the King George and ran eighth. They aborted the mission and retired him.
That is how hard it is to go over the pond and deal with the europeans on, literally, their turf. I don't believe we've ever had a horse try since and don't know if we will ever see an owner with the testicle fortitude of Jones to try such a feat again.

I think one of those fourstars something NY horses shipped over to Europe and one a Classic race there. However, he was not much on dirt, and one horse is a pretty small sample size.

Last I heard was that Lemhi Gold was in Croatia. Vaguely Noble's were not very popular stallions.

Interco was a pretty nice horse on both surfaces.

if Swain was so good at passing hosses, how come he got beat in there

Outside of her win in the BC Classic on the Pro-Ride at SA over Gio Ponti -- Zenyatta passed a bunch of relative garbage in all of her wins.

She had no raw speed and was very mediocre inside of 9 furlongs. She was not campaigned in a sportsmanlike fashion nor was she assigned true handicaps with weight spreads. A few different races were even stripped of handicap and changed to stakes condition events.

In the Breeders Cup Classic at Churchill Downs she got the dreamiest pace setup a race horse could ever hope for and Smith rode a good race to keep the big slug from losing contact with the field and not getting her momentum stopped as she picked her way through the pack in arguably the weakest BC Classic dirt edition of all-time. The freaking BC Juvenile went only 3 points slower. It was the sad sun-dial collapse-fest Classic.

Anyone who thinks Zenyatta was as good a racehorse as Swain is painfully stupid.

Watch the head-on replay.

I think the career of Exceller is probably the best template for a "Horse of the World".

Another one with some potential at the top level on all surfaces in Europe and NA was Erin's Isle.

Opening Verse was used as a rabbit for Indian Skimmer in the '89 Eclipse, got drilled by superhorse Nashwan, but beat everything else including his stablemate and the highly touted Warning. He was 200-1.

Yeah, he was supposed to beat Miesque in her second attempt to win the Mile in '88. Didn't handle the yielding turf allegedly.

An unheralded Steinlen was 2nd at long odds, IIRC. Bet Twice made his final career start in there, too. Not sure why they didn't take one final stab at Alysheba. He was good enough to beat him in the resurrected Pimlico Special in May, and ran close to him in the Meadowlands Cup.