Originally Posted by brockguy
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.
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