Discreet Cat is the freak. Can't wait for the Cigar.

see, that's the thing..unlike bernardini, when discreet cat faced lesser opposition, that joker took on the clock and won....fastest 6 f for the entire saratoga meet. and that was his first start back. unreal stuff there.
bernie has been named the best this year, one of the best ever--and he may not even be the best in his OWN BARN.

Fastest 7 furlongs, not 6 I believe.

Let's take them one-by-one ...

Affirmed tailed off at the end of his 3YO season ... he lost his last two races ... to be sure to a great 4YO and with a slipped saddle ... but losses nonetheless.

The 1954 colt crop was the greatest ever ... and I started following thoroughbred racing in 1957 because of them ... but all of those great horses had significant limitations as 3YOS ... Bold Ruler wouldn't rate and could be beaten by throwing a rabbit at him ... Gallant Man needed to close off a fast pace and barely managed to beat Bureaucracy in the Travers and Dedicate in the Nassau County when the pace was slow. Both Bold Ruler and Gallant Man were defeated at scale weight by the older Dedicate in the Woodward. And Round Table didn't come close to winning his two most important races as a 3YO ... the Kentucky Derby and the Trenton Handicap.

War Admiral was sensational as a 3YO ... but he didn't set track records or win by the open lengths that Bernardini has.

Count Fleet was retired after the Belmont Stakes and never had to face a really good horse. He beat up regularly on Blue Swords ... and there was virtually nothing behind that one. This was during the depths of WWII ... when it looked like Germany and Japan were invincible ... and most everyone ... including owners, trainers, and jockeys ... were putting their time into the war effort ... not horse racing.

Look at the actual records ... and you'll agree that IF Bernardini puts in another exceptional race in the BC Classic ... his 3YO record will be as good as any but the very, very best.

was it? at any rate, his first start back was the fastest at that distance for the meet....

Lost in the fog was incredible. Any horse who can throw the kind of numbers he threw up with a cancer wrapped around their spine is mind boggling. If that horse had not gotten sick, god who knows. I think its a fair to say all his losses were tied into his disease. That horse was special.

In the words of Mugatu in Zoolander, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills." Give me a 4 yr old season or give me death.

We should start a petition to send to the oil boys over there to keep him in training. How many signers could we get?

Yeah, its semantics, he would've run the fastest 6 or 8 if they let him. Ha ha.

Could it be the other way around?

As I've posted many times ... coulda/shoulda/woulda doesn't count ... we can only go by actual races.

All we can say for sure ... is that in the two common years that they raced ... 2YO and 3YO ... Secretariat was better ... AND ... Spectacular Bid as a 4YO had one of the best campaigns ... possibly the best ... that any American race horse has ever had.

Nope. We should meet up someday. Will be at AQ in November. Would guess you wouldn't be far from that.

Or he may have gotten even better ...

... I'll find out when I get to heaven ... don't know what'll happen with you.

---war admiral broke the belmont stakes record set 17 years prior by his old man, and equaled the american record for that distance--and this after grabbing a quarter leaving the gate. he was a perfect 8 for 8 that year.

then there's damascus, winner of the race of the century, as a three year old, over buckpasser and dr fager. all three are inside the top 20 racehorses of the 20th century. he also won the travers by 22 lengths, tying the track record with buckpasser!
count fleet may not have had competition, so he raced record books and the clock. his 25 length victory in the belmont was surpassed only by secretariats, and he set a stakes record in that race to boot.

i haven't a clue...but glad you do.

Ten days before the 2005 BC Sprint ... I publicly assured everyone that Lost In The Fog would finish off the board.

If you had seen and paid attention to that post ... you would have called the caterer ... and cancelled the party.

RIP Lost In The Fog ... you did your best every time they put you in a starting gate ... and that's all we can ask for.

So did a lot of people on this board. In fact, the press about LITF wasn't that dissimilar to that of Bernie? Hmmm.....

What marvelous race horses they all were ... thank God that Bernardini may be ending the 27-year drought that we've had since the last great one ... Spectacular Bid ... like those.

On the "other" board ... the goo-goos had Lost In The Fog being greater than Hindoo, Domino, Roseben, Bold Ruler, Dr. Fager, and Ghostzapper combined.

I'm glad the people here were more sensible ... I wish I had known then what I know now about thoroughbred racing forums.

I have no freaking clue which one was better b/c they ran like 7 years apart and never faced each other.
I would tend to think SBid was a better 1 turn horse, but its just speculation.

the debate, and the b/c of my age its the only one I find interesting, is who is the best dirt horse since Spectacular Bid.
the common and probably safest answer would be Cigar.
Its a valid response, but I would disagree.

Mineshaft or Ghostzapper would get my vote.

i have trouble placing Leading the Parade in a histortical perspective b/c I dont think his career is over yet.

Repent

What I absolutely HATE is when people say that a horse is "not in the same class as so and so YET". That is the dumbest statement that can be made. If u think that if Bernardini wins the Classic the same way as he's been winning his other starts will put him into the all-time great conversation, wouldn't that mean that today, he's already there? What I mean is that the talent is already there. The only thing that he doesn't have yet are enough accomplishments. Some of u that base your arguments on what a horse accomplishes, yeah, I can understand your holding off on putting Bernardini into the conversation. But if he does end up doing the things u need to see him do in order to be moved up on your lists, it has to mean that the talent was there all along. If that's the case, what is so wrong with putting him up there now? It's like with Michael Jordan. It didn't take him winning six titles for me to realize that he was the greatest player I'd ever seen. I knew that after watching him play four years. Ability doesn't always have to be matched by accomplishments for me.