The wind was emenating from Southern California.

Ah, the armchair trainers are out in force … again

Pay no attention to their idle chatter, John … do whatever it takes to get your champion SIX-YEAR-OLD mare back to the CUP fresh, fit, and ready to fire her best shot at the 10f pretenders



Meanwhile, in other news, the reigning 'horse-of-the-year' goes for that elusive first W in some G2 at CD… lol

I agree. To me, it is obvious the old man gets a hard on when she runs in California because some of the attention gets put on him. He is praised by the people there for running them there.

Personally, I can care less what races she runs in, I'm just glad she is running. Sure I would like to see her against better competition but it is what it is.

I wasn't around for Personal Ensign or Ruffian or any of the other greats that all the old timers talk about. In my lifetime, Zenyatta is a 'great' and I enjoy seeing her run. I'll never forget the energy inside of Santa Anita when she popped her head out down the lane in the BC, it was like people were only watching her the whole time and saw she had a chance and went apeshit.

Hey probation boy! Were you one of the dirty boosters? Too bad mr Kardashian has to give back his trophy...

Blah blah blah. She's not doing anything new, so why's it so great that she's still running? She might as well be retired. It's nice that you were there for her BC win and it's nice that she has fans in California, but the rest of us couldn't give two shts about that right now. We want to see her challenged, not do the same damn boring thing three years in a row.

Again, they want best in show, not HOY.

no, they want hoy. they just don't want to run an hoy campaign to earn it. they're supposed to get the votes just based on her 'talent', not on her actual on the track accomplishments. kills me the bitter zenyatta fans who think she should have won over a 3 yo who went out and EARNED it throughout an entire, perfect season.
at the very least, zenyatta should be in the californian. and giving nine pounds-big deal. like that's something to brag about.

am i glad she's running, sure. is the campaign one for the ages? hell no.

Honestly there is less interest in general in Zenyatta's CA AAA events than any other supposedly great horse in history. I doubt that I will go out of my way to watch her race.

The best thing would have been her losing that race at Del mar last year so they wouldn't be so obsessed with the stupid winning streak. Winning streaks are only in vogue now because owners want to be part of the story and the college football mentality rules. Perhaps if they didn't have the undefeated deal they would have tested her in traditional proving grounds. Now if she doesn't win out and win the BC i just dont think she will be remembered as anything more than a really good horse who spent much of her career ducking competition, and mostly historically weak competition at that.

That's as succinctly as anyone can possibly put it.

SOLID.

I want to see how she runs Sunday, if she runs off and wins for fun than yea this sounds really stupid.

A win for the Rockies

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. But these comments about Zenyatta are so weird to me. I am looking very forward to seeing Zenyatta run. She is attempting to make racing history sunday. Only one other horse in america will ever have won more races than Zenyatta while undefeated. That's Huge.

Zenyatta is not responsible for what races she runs in. She's a horse. On Sunday she will attempt to make history and there are people here saying they're not going to watch it. They're entitled to do what they want. But in my opinion it's really dumb to miss out on a historic race because you dislike her campaign. History is history - and one way or another Sunday's race will be a race people will talk about for years to come.

Don't miss history because you hate a horse's campaign.

Of all the monumentally stupid things Zenyattards say, this thing about being a six year old, to me, is easily the most asinine.

Firstly, that 2yo campaign Zenyatta had, I assure you, took nothing out of her. She ran a whole whopping ZERO times at 2.

She did, however, have a far more taxing race schedule as a 3yo. After spending nearly the first eleven months of her 3yo season not racing, she finally makes her debut on Nov. 22 of her 3yo season, then actually made a second start to close out a truly grueling 3yo campaign.

So, in effect, this is really only her third season of racing. Same as RA.

In case the obvious has eluded you, that means that by the time in RA's career that she had locked up the HOY trophy, Zenyatta, was still an unraced prospect, in her own respective career.

You must have been pretty excited about Pepper's Pride as well.

Not at all blackthroated...
Good way to avoid the point that this is going to be a race worth watching:)

In my opinion every race is worth watching.

I didn't avoid any point....I just don't buy the manufactured hype. Good horses deserved to be campaigned as such. If connections don't believe in their horse why should I?

Something must be up. Either they're not pleased with how she's trained, or the ship to Oaklawn knocked her out more than they expected. Throat said it best, this is not the campaign I was expecting.

Zenyatta's connections don't believe in her?

Zenyatta ran in the breeders cup classic when she could easily have ran in the ladies classic last year. That's believing in your horse blackthroated.

Her connections don't believe in her. Give me a break.

And saying I like Peppers pride when I post a statement about how the Vanity will be a historic race is completely avoiding anything that I have to say IMO.

I get it though if I say the vanity's going to be a historic race it means peppers pride was awesome to me. Well Blackthroated... if I thought peppers pride was amazing I wouldn't think that Sunday was something special would I? I would think Zenyatta had no record to break wouldn't I.

You don't have to like Zenyatta though and I get it you don't:) To each his own I guess. My opinion is different though and I guess you want to belittle me for it. My point was think about the history this horse is making and stop hating on her while there is still time to enjoy her. She's making history and if you don't want to admit it than go ahead and say I like peppers pride.

No, the BC Classic was their believing for almost the entire year that their claim that her being undefeated would be good enough to back into a win for HOY, then realizing their backs were up against the wall after Rachel did what she did and going to the Classic.

And after the reaction when they lost the award, it was pretty clear that they had a big sense of entitlement to that award. The way they're campaigning her this year just confirms that they didn't run her in the Classic to prove her greatness, it was to try to win an award they thought they would waltz into.

She's a special and very good animal for sure, but we're never going to know where she stands among the greats, because her connections are not willing to show us. She's a horse, that's not her fault, but in the end she also gets her legacy as nothing more than what she does as a horse, and her connections don't seem too eager to build that up. Good for them for doing what they want, but I don't want to see any more sour grapes and classless reactions like earlier this year when she loses another HOY vote after another campaign like this.

Really? You weren't expecting this?

I don't see how that's possible.

Why would they change their actions after all this time? Because they said they would?