Thanks for looking that up

what zenyatta did last year is immaterial. as for competing 'at the highest levels of her division'....i think that's pushing it.

who were the better older fillies that she has not beaten over two years? This ought to be good.

Alysheba was "America's horse"

Icon Project for one.

The Nashoba's Key tragedy cost us a chance to see her match up with Zen.

I know I was in the minority at the time when I posted that I thought Zenyatta was likely the better of the two.

I think Zenyatta might have found beating horses like Informed Decision and Ventura a huge challenge at 8.5fs .. especially in those slow paced races.

If there was no filly and mare sprint added to the BC menu .. it's possible she could have faced both at 8.5f in the Lady's Secret .. though Ventura probably would have run in the Mile against the boys and not prepped in the Lady's Secret.

Hard to know what Informed Decision might have done without a filly and mare sprint. Probably sprinted against the males at 6fs ... but looking at her pedigree ... I think the Mile on turf or the Distaff wouldn't have been fully out of the question.

again, i was referring to this year. last year means nothing regarding the question in the title of this thread. the bcc field was the only decent field she was in the mix with all year.

just saw that the new york times is offering voting in their poll with a point/counterpoint argument. a nice piece for racing in there for a change!

oh, and rachel is the overwhelming fave with respondents.

It would be interesting if they did the poll like espn and showed how the voting is in different parts of the country.

Thats like asking people in Ohio who they favor, OSU or Michigan...

You do realize she trashed, and I mean trashed, the filly who is going to be second in older mare voting, three separate times?

i assume you mean life is sweet? another horse who had a good bc so suddenly is a top horse for the year....i guess four wins is all it takes, just discount the losses. makes you wonder why any of them run anytime other than late fall.

who did she lose to? Cmon, this is basic handicapping 101

Rail Trip, who is probably as talented a horse in the country

and Zenyatta, as Steve Crist says in his Sunday column "one of the great female horses of all time".

sure she is. i'm in no way slighting zenyatta when i say that simply put, rachel had the better year. did zenyatta have a good year? absolutely. in many years, i'd have said she'd earned the top honors. but not this year. as good as she was, i just think rachel accomplished more.

as for the life is sweet argument, it seems a circuitous one. zenyatta is good because she beat life is sweet, who is good because she lost to zenyatta? if rachel on the other hand had confined herself to racing in only one state, how would you feel about her chances, her victories?

It would be one thing if she was losing to Zenyatta, and only Zenyatta. The fact remains that she was soundly beaten by Anabaa's Creation and Lethal Heat on the one occasion as well, and then beaten again by Lethal Heat the next time she faced Zenyatta.

It's a totally convenient, but not very logical, argument.

Zenyatta's greatness was not proven by her beating Anabaa's Creation, say her supporters, but by beating Life Is Sweet....who was beaten by Anabaa's Creation? Zenyatta's greatness was not proven by her beating Lethal Heat, but by beating Life Is Sweet.....who was beaten twice by Lethal Heat?

There's an argument to be made for Zenyatta, to be sure, but I'm having a really hard time thinking that her beating Life Is Sweet, when she was running 4th, is the best way to go about it, because that either means Life Is Sweet was not very good in those two tries (agreed), or the Ladies' Classic field was just THAT pathetic that a horse who couldn't even beat Anabaa's Creation and Lethal Heat could run off with it?

East Coast bias, even if they know who the horses are.

i disagree. people keep lumping rachel into the east coast, conveniently forgetting races at oaklawn, fairgrounds and churchill downs.

In terms of horse racing, "East Coast" bias would include tracks east of the Mississippi. Horses that run at Fairgrounds, CD, Oaklawn and in Florida are considered "east coast" horses

agree, thats why when it comes to Eclipse voting over the years there have been some very curious results with west coast horses.

In the horse racing world, everything east of Wash, Cali, Ariz is considered "East Coasters". Easterners claim MTB (the New Mexico runner), anything from Arlington, KY, etc.

when was the last time a horse from Az or New Mexico won a championship?

ah, not so. when azeri shipped to arlington for the bc, and won HOY, people knocked her for not coming east that year.

Agreed. A recent one was the 2004 sprint eclipse where Speightstown won over Pico Central. Pico Central won the vosburgh, carter and Met mile and finished 3rd in the cigar after a long year shipping back and forth. In their lone meeting, Pico Central blew speightstown's doors off in the Vosburgh. Yet, speightstown was named champion sprinter. The rationale at the time? Speightstown showed up on BC day.

Well, sadly, I'm sure some voters view the Vosburgh as some sort of BC "prep" race, the way they would a Derby prep.

In the BC Sprint itself, Speighstown won well clear of runner-up Kela, who sure enough, defeated Pico Central in the Pat O'Brien at Del Mar.

The loss in the Cigar Mile was probably the nail in the coffin.

I hear you. But speightstown's BC victory was his lone grade 1 all year long. Regardless of how the voters viewed the vosburgh, the race really wasnt close and it was at a distance Speightstown was supposed to be better at.

If you took the body of work over the course of a season, it wasnt even close. Pico took victories in Belmont's two biggest sprints of the year and finished a respectable first and third at the big A. Pico roasted Speightstown in their only head to head. How does Speightstown get that award IF you are judging the winner based on what happened over the course of an entire year?

In my view, HOY should be based on the best horse who raced in North America in that year (thats why like KG has said before, I would have liked Ghostzapper to have gotten it off one run in May of 2005). The best assembled horse race of the year was the Classic and Zenyatta won it very very cosily. That was the performance of the year! She deserves the accolade and thats why I voted for her. However, if there was a year for Co-HOYs, this is it. Rachel had a smashing year..

Whatever. That kind of thinking apparently got King Glorious kicked outta here.

"Best assembled"? The BC Classic was nothing more than what would have happened if Derek Jeter, Corey Nakatani, Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders, Kobe Byrant, David Beckham, Tom Brady, and Susan Boyle got to together and had a singing competition.

Z





Nuff said :cool:

I was wrong, I should of said " California Haters" is more like it.

i don't think it's a hatred of one state. zenyatta hasn't gotten any more grief than say...pepper's pride, or hallowed dreams. and no, i'm not comparing them talent-wise!! it's more a desire to see horses run in more than one state, to move outside their comfort zone.. it's a completely different style out there, and no dirt surfaces, and is next to impossible to draw comparisons if a horse only runs out there. a horse, such as rachel, who runs well all over the country except cali should get more respect than one who remains only in cali, right? there's a reason rachel didn't run there, and it's the same reason zenyatta only ran there. artificial surfaces. a comparison of the two has to be done only on what they both accomplished for the year, as any other comparisons would be based on opinion and conjecture.

I love how you sit there and make it sound like California horses never leave the state, when its usually exactly the opposite, they go all the way across country, winning at a pretty good clip on surfaces that are foreign to them, yet you rarely see it in reverse.

If they BC had been at CD she would have been there, the owners support racing, oh maybe you forgot horses like Giacomo and Tiago traveling around the country?

how is my talking of zenyatta not leaving the state this year an indictment of all california horses every year?

its the same argument, every year, every thread, it gets old.

for example, when azeri was up for HOY it was, she had an uninspired campaign, she just beat up on no ones in socal, she did not race at belmont or saratoga..

She raced nine times if I remember correctly though including a win in Chicago.

did I mention the number of races? no, it was the local

it was also "if she wanted to win she should have run in the classic"....thats what you heard around message boards.

So you're bringing up complaints made by basically no one that is on this message board 7 years ago and somehow comparing them to this situation?

NT

which is why i mentioned her, because i thought she did plenty for HOY that year. those who argued she never travelled east were incorrect. altho she didn't go to the east coast, she most certainly did not remain in socal.

Well Armed won most of his money in one of those Mo-Nut-Liquor Countries. That money isn't supposed to be taken into account for this award. The reasons for Volponi n' RP not getting it are obvious. The reason for PP is because he wasn't active at all for long periods of the year (Mineshaft dominated those periods of the year, and got injured right before the B.C.) It's been 6 years now. Hopefully that's accurate......One of the reasons I don't miss the SOCAL dirt tracks is because they tended to get as biased as that Dubai track was that day. Also, horses didn't come back from races (on our dirt) quickly enough to fill fields well. A problem with the synthetic out here(especially Pro-Ride n' Del Mar Poly) is that trainers often bring young horses back too quickly off a nice debut effort on it (#2 be poo.) The chances of that(#2 be poo) are even more increased with those damn incessant 7f maiden races they seemed to be writing at Anita.