Originally Posted by johnny pinwheel (Post 667630)

i guess you were not here last year...according to some folks rail trip is a monster. once again he got trounced yesterday. hes a useful horse but hes not that good. i think curlin beat awesome gem by about 12 lengths.....lol...when he was only 4....yeah, rail trip is a world beater...lol...lol

Originally Posted by miraja2 (Post 667628)

The big thing this race pointed out to me is that the sport needs more Awesome Gems.

Some people say that having a horse win the Triple Crown would "save" or "help" horse racing. I say that's nonsense. All that would do is create a superstar horse. Well....the sport has a couple active "superstar" horses and their connections haven't done a damn thing with them in the last 8 months to make this a more interesting sport.

What the sport needs is a bunch of solid, graded-stakes caliber animals like Awesome Gem, where the connections ship all over, take on all comers and put together a career where the horse has faced Midnight Lute, Kip Deville, Curlin, Hard Spun, Global Hunter, Street Sense, Brother Derek, Zenyatta, Heatseeker, Rail Trip, etc.

He loses a lot more than he wins.....and that's okay. At least they aren't scared by shipping him, or by running on a surface or a distance that might not be his absolute best. Last year at this time he was running a game second to Global Hunter in a G1 turf race. Later in the year he bested 10 rivals to win a G2 dirt race. Yesterday he won a G1 race on synthetic. And to top it all off, yesterday was his 11th start in a little over 12 months! What a concept.

Originally Posted by OldDog (Post 667958)

:tro:

I really like this horse. Unfortunately we only see this kind of campaigning with geldings. But you've got to love this horse -- he tries every time, is often in the money, and travels far and wide, racing on any surface. THIS is the horse, or kind of horse, that more people should be fans of.