Huh?

Dr. Fager never went out of form. Cigar, once he got good, never went out of form.

The pretenders of today can't overcome any kind of a bad trip or carry weight, at least compared to horses of 25+ years ago.

Any race that featured a rabbit impacting the result doesn't deserve to be called the race of the century.

It ought to be a fairly run race - regardless of who is in it - to earn that title I would think.

i think it's called that due to who ran, not how it was run.

This is very good.

If we are going to use the good doctor as a measure of greatness then there are maybe 3 or 4 horses in history that can be considered in that class. What an absolute monster.

Was Affectionately great?

Is it just like everything else where there are layers and overlaps of this thing called greatness?

I was impressed reading over the Top 100 book.... I don't know much off the top of my head, not the type who can remember figures, but i do remember reading that she carried 137 in the Vagrancy.

I'm not trying to qualify her as being great because of this alone, but combined with her record of wins and beating the boys (which seems to matter to some, I think...) was she or wasn't she?

Thunder Gulch as well... although im not a big fan of giving a horse too much credit for beating breakdowns..

Heavenly Prize at least finished the race. I guess the mighty Cigar didn't break her down like so many others.

I absolutely do think KG and Java Gold were great horses. I think Ghostzapper and Smarty Jones were great horses. I think Lammatarra and Arazi were great horses as well. I didn't watch horses race before 1986 though so I don't think it's fair for me to accurately try to judge horses that ran before then. Sure, I can look over the history books and look at who they faced and beat, how fast they ran and how much weight they carried, how many championships they won, etc and form a pretty educated opinion on them but without having been there when it was happening, I wouldn't try to make the judgement. While I do think the horses that I listed were great horses, I wouldn't ever try to make the argument that they were better than the horses generally regarded as the best ever, horses like Bid or Secretariat or Dr. Fager. My opinion is not based on proven and tested facts as much as it is on limited evidence and belief. What I don't like, however, is the belief that some of the horses we've seen over the past 20 years COULDN'T have done what some of the greats of the past did. It's not fair to the horses to downgrade them because of what the humans have done to the game. Maybe King Glorious couldn't have carried 130+ and set a world record at a mile. But if Dr. Fager had been running today instead of when he was running, he wouldn't ever have gotten the chance to do some of the things he did. If Spectacular Bid was running today, chances are he'd not get a chance to run a 4yo campaign, which is where he showed his complete greatness. So it's about opportunity as well as ability. Today's horses may or may not have some of the ability of the past horses. We'll never know. Take a horse like Bernardini. He was dominant over his peers as a 3yo. He lost to a champion older horse by a length at the end of his 3yo season and every cynic pointed to that as proof that he was overrated. Didn't the great Spectacular Bid as a 3yo lose to the 4yo Affirmed in the 1979 JCGC? Didn't the great Affirmed as a 3yo lose to the 4yo Seattle Slew in the 1978 JCGC (both beaten by Exceller)? The difference was that each of those 3yo's got the chance to continue on as 4yo's an prove their greatness. Sometimes, opportunity and timing can be just as, if not more important than ability. I mention timing because I think that often, perception is important in how a horse is judged. Going back to Affirmed, think about his TC win. Without Alydar around, Affirmed would have streaked to wins of about three, eight, and 13 lengths and not only been a TC winner but a DOMINATING winner. I believe that the perception of just how good he was would be higher under that scenario. Same thing with Easy Goer/Sunday Silence. Without the other around, either of them would have been a runaway TC winner. I believe that had there been no Sunday Silence, people today would be talking about Easy Goer as one of the five best horses of all-time. An undeated 3yo season that included not only a TC sweep but wins in the Gotham, Wood, Travers and four grade one wins against older horses in the Suburban, Whitney, Woodward, and JCGC. I'm sure he'd be mentioned as top five ever. But....there was a Sunday Silence around. Does that mean that Easy Goer's actual talent level wasn't as high as it was? No. He was as good as we thought he was. He just wasn't as good as Sunday Silence. Ability+opportunity+timing.

You can believe all you want but they weren't great horses.

You make an interesting point about Affirmed, but I think his stock was actually elevated because Alydar was around, and his incredible ability to finish ahead of a horse as immensely talented as the mighty Alydar was the true measure of Affirmed. If you are at all confused about this find a film of Alydar's win in the Whitney as he prepped for the Travers ( and then find one of Affirmed making up five lengths on a loose on the lead Sensitive Prince in the final eighth of a mile in the Jim Dandy just a few days later ).

As for Easy Goer and Sunday Silence....you make another interesting point. However, I'm not sure that both horses shouldn't be considered great and they would surely have routinely drowned the likes of Java Gold, Smarmy Jones....and of course King Glorious. Azari was possibly a great 2YO...but so was Devil's Bag. Do you consider him great as well?

By the way, I think Java Gold did have the potential to be a very special horse but unfortunately both Pat Day and injuries kept us from seeing that. He was a wonderful horse. I have a great picture of him winning the Whitney somewhere. I should mail it to you.

As you know, over time, legends grow. To those that were around and know how good Alydar was, they hold Affirmed in much higher regard. But as time goes by, there are fewer and fewer around that know the complete situation and all they rely on are records and videos. If you didn't know anything about the other horses of his day and just watched videos of Affirmed running off with easy victories in the TC, your belief of how good he was would probably be higher than if you watched him eek out narrow victories over Alydar.

As for Easy Goer and Sunday Silence, how great either of them were is up for debate. But I'd bet 4/5 that Easy Goer would be in that top five conversation if there would have been no Sunday Silence because of his record. And I don't think either of them was as good as Java Gold or Smarty Jones. At 10f, I'd grudgingly have to give them the edge over KG but at 7f or 8f, I'll agree with what McCarron said; that they wouldn't catch him. Even at 9f, it might be tough if there wasn't anything up there to keep him company.

With Arazi, I'm not sure how good he was. I don't know if he was a great horse or not. What I do know is that I saw him make the same move in the Derby as he made in the BC and it wasn't a lack of ability that got him beat that day. He was done in by a lack of preparation and by the way his human connections handled him. With him, I thought he was so far ahead of his contemporaries that he could have, under the right circumstances, put some major wins on his record.

Right, but what you are really doing is bolstering my entire argument that because people don't know history they misevaluate horses. If you know history, you understand the true greatness of the likes of Affirmed and Alydar.....if you don't you lack the depth to either truly understand their talents and, more importantly, the real talents of those masquerading as their supposed heir apparents.

By the way, Smarty Jones ran one great race in his entire career, the Preakness, and failed the one time everything didn't go his way, the Belmont. Calling him great is like declaring a bartender great because the one time you bought a drink from her she somehow managed to pick out the only cold beer in cooler. Let her do it a few more times before acknowledging her exceptional talents.

That's not a fair comparison. There are lots more beers in the cooler.

I do agree with you 100% that knowing history is the best way to evaluate them as far as historical purposes. That's why I stick to evaluating only those that have run during my time.

I don't think he was ever the same after the surgery and the stupid Derby attempt. But I thought his Derby run was as good as his BC run was. He just didn't have the foundation under him to finish it off. It proved to me though that the BC was not a fluke.