It would be interesting to see if there was at least a disproportionate amount of euthanized horses (for any reason) that were stabled at Belmont during the same time frame.

For the sake of argument, you might only "see" cancer in "good horses" because people are more likely to go the extra mile with their stakes horses as far as diagnosing specifically any illness that befalls them. Less valuable horses who's health spiral out of control are often put down without determining the exact cause all the time. Even Danny Vella thought his filly just had a run-of-the-mill virus until it she didn't get better. Then they pulled out all the stops.

I wonder if NYRA shells out to do necropsies all the horses that are put down in the barn area, like they do in CA.

Along the Sea?

Does the thought that some of the greatest horses on this list may have raced on performance enhancing drugs tarish their reputations? We've seen it in baseball, how does one compare Roger Clemons to Bob Gibson, or for that matter Ghostzapper to Secretariat?

Speaking of which... just got done watching that movie. :cool:

I think there is a greater chance that horses in the 70's were using something far more performance enhancing than horses in our era. While I wasnt around to see 1st hand in the 70's I have some pretty good sources.

That is the problem of comparing horses from different eras, we will never know for certain if horse A could beat horse B. I'm not sure whether a horse runs faster today or not means anything, all we know for certain is that they can only beat whomever they line up against. The rest is speculation. I raised the question when I think of horses trained by alleged substance users as in Frankel or Pletcher. Without that advantage would their horses run as fast? Not likely from this standpoint and just as in the case of Clemons the mere thought has tarnished his legacy forever.

I really liked Knight's Templar. I knew that she had died, but I assumed that she had broken down in a race or of some other kind of injury.

I find this very hard to believe as a coincidence because of the rarity of cancer in horses, but there are carcinogenic substances in almost everything....the food you eat even...it depends on your genetic susceptibility to whether you develop cancer or not most of the time unless you are exposed to something incredibly bad.

There was most likely something at Belmont around those two stalls that caused the cancer, but I seriously doubt that management had much to do with it.

Oh well, we'll never really know....

Well, that puts this argument to rest.

The scary thing is for once she's making sense. I'd better stop drinking.

I guess I better start.

:D Never a bad idea.

Da Hoss

I think the surface was just being scratched with LITF. I think he would have been an all time great. Just did everything way too easy before getting ill.

it's that whole blind squirrel/acorn thing.

Dave Johnson had a nice line in there...

"Holy Bull is a champion.. there he is.. and you'll never forget him"

Squirrels can't even remember where they put the acorns. The only reason they find where they put them in the first place is because of their incredible sense of smell, not sight...

They don't have to be blind to make your point.

where's dahoss when you need him?

The problem that I have is that the testing is so much better now that almost no positive now would be caught under the same test of earlier eras. There is a perception that all our horses now are under the influence of medications of some kind but the truth is that there were far more powerful substances being used in the 70's in particular than there are now. That is not to say that every trainer was using something but drugs like sublimaze and etorphine were used and they are far greater performance enhancers than any steroids or minute clembuterol traces found. Also there were many horses being treated with Lasix except for a long time it was not even published. The thought that horse racing is a dirtier game now simply ignores the reality of earlier eras.

When I was a little girl in Poland, I had a pony. He was beautiful.

And I loved him.

I'm not gonna sit in a tepid pool of my own filth. Millions of microbes having sex all around me...

I prepared this whole meal as I bathed...

...and laughter is the best medicine...

Something happened in that shedrow...it was almost as if it were something...from above...

Junior mint?

How far to the left of the E are we now?

The best thing thing to do is just...'pop'...put it outta your mind...

I'm still waiting for Eternal Prince to soften him up....

The video on this one is very poor but it shows the heart this horse had.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuYas-bB2iY

I'd love to see a video of the 85 Monmouth Handicap, to this day the most impressive performance I've seen by a confirmed frontrunner.

I can't believe that some people have listed Europeans, even made a list exclusively of Euros and Lammtarra wasn't on it. Amazing.

4 starts.

So what. Would it have been better if he had six more starts in 1995 and lost them all? If a 3yo wins the Derby, King George, and Arc, but lost the 2000 Guineas, Irish Derby, and the Juddmonte International, he's had an exceptional year. If an American horse broke his maiden in October then won the Kentucky Derby, Hollywood Gold Cup, and BC Classic, nobody would doubt how good that horse was. Greatness can be seen in one start. Gayle Sayers didn't need to play more than one season for people to know how good he was. People really need to get over this thing about number of starts. I suppose that if an American horse misses all of the preps but then makes his 3yo debut in the Kentucky Derby and wins the TC and retires, he's not great because he only made three starts? That's foolish.

you can see a great performance in one start. but not necessarily a great horse.

If you see three great performances in the three toughest races on the continent, that still can't be enough? I mean, the horse layed off from October to June and then won the Epsom Derby in course record time in his second career race. That alone would have been enough to let me know. But then to top it off with the King George and Arc wins, over older horses in two of the premier races in the world was icing.

I have attended European sales on a regular basis the last few years, have a number of contacts over there and know quite a few euro types over here and with the exception of you, no one thinks this was some kind of superhorse.

Hey I had a link to a list of PPs for the derby winners from 93-03, so I decided to put the BSF idea to the test. I decided to take the best five BSFs from the sophmore year for those 11 Ky derby winners. You could take 2 races you might take 8, I dunno I took the best 5; I rounded to the nearest half I dont think there was much rounding error. If anyone has more BSF from other seasons I'd like to see them...

Here is the order:


Silver Charm 112 1/2
War Emblem 111
Funny Cide 109
Fu Peg 109
Real Quiet 108 1/2
Go for Gin 107 1/2
Thunder Gulch 107
Charismatic 105
Monarchos 105
Grindtone 101 (four races only)
Sea Hero 100

I dont know what overall conclusions to draw from all this but I will make a few comments about BSF in general as applied to this question:

1) THe avowed purpose of BSF was to make comparisons between horses shipping in from different tracks and those moving up and down in class ranks. At least that is my understanding. I have no doubt that they perform this mission quite well I have serious doubt whether they can perform the same mission when making subtle distinctions among the top horses running in different years.

2) Taking Funny Cide's best 2 races and comparing them to Smarty Jones is not really what the question was about since it is asking for the entire season not just 2 races. You have to consider all the races in the season and you might want to consider the strength of the particular fields they faced. Not sure BSF from one or two races really gets you there.

3) Measuring greatness has to mean more than just final times and/or BSF. Two fine examples of this have to do with Seattle Slews Jockey Club Gold and Personal Ensign in the BC distaff; when the factors that people talk about have to do with trip/adversity that these horses faced. Stuff that is not measured by a BSF or final time. BSF does measure surface in a sense, but Personal's Ensign's run in the slop was more than that.

4) To say that FUnny Cide had a better BSF than Smarty presents an insolvable Chicken/Egg problem. It could mean one of several things: That FUnnyCideis Underrated. That Smarty is OVerrated. Or that BSF are simply not well attuned for this purpose.

In lieu of more information, there is no answer to that question.

bernardini and barbaro were both very special
barbaro obvious tragedy
and bernardini loss to invasor only came back to flatter him, with what invasor did afterwards.

My proudest bet I ever kopped, was Lammtarra in the Derby.

He only had one start prior to the race, in a maiden against the speedy Myself. I thought at the time that was a potentially top class horse, but he seemed to get injured all the time, until the derby. The morning of the derby I looked at the form, and I said bugger it, sometimes you gotta go with the breeding. Lammtarra had amazing breeding for the derby, being by a derby winner out of an oaks winner.

I slammed him in, and took 16/1 at Ladbrokes.

All the same, the horse never won a race by more than a length. Therefore we cannot really judge how good he was. Best horses he beat were Pentire, and Freedom Cry, who were good, but I wouldnt put them in the same league as some of the others mentioned on my list.

I agree with you that Pentire and Freedom Cry weren't all time greats. But they were really good horses. Pentire came back to win the Irish Champion Stakes (Freedom Cry was second) and also won the King George the next year. Pentire also beat out Singspiel (future U.S. turf champ) a couple of times. Freedom Cry was a nose away from winning the BC Turf that year. Lammatarra also beat Swain in that Arc and Swain was a pretty good horse (wins in the King George twice, Coronation Cup, Irish Champion Stakes, seconds in the Dubai World Cup and BC Classic). So he was beating some pretty good horses. To do them in only his 2-4th career starts makes the accomplishment even more amazing, IMO. He also set a course record when winning the Epsom Derby. Also, it's been my opinion that winning margins in European races is very overrated. Many times, you will see a win called dominating and the winning margin was less than a length.

When this thread first appeared, I set the over/under on total posts at 9 1/2.

About the usual results for your opinion.















Somebody had to say it.

When I made my last post, I set the over/under on number of minutes before Andy broke my balls at 4 minutes.

Under lock.

I laughed

I'm no expert in performance enhancers in horseracing, so I will paraphrase this by saying I am speaking solely from a fans point of view. I agree that all eras new and old probably have had their cheaters. I even remember reading that Tom Smith, Seabiscuit's Trainer was alleged to have been a cheater, though that was a rumour. I'm not convinced though that the drugs of yesterday supercede the more sophistocated drugs of today. Veterinarian's today can easily mask drugs to pass tests, it has happened for atheletes in other sports, that once a drug can be detected the cheaters will find something else that testers cannot detect. Essentially performance enhancers are far more sophisticated than the old milkshakes of years gone by. HGH is the big word for steroids now, and it wasn't just until recently that the public started to become aware of how many atheletes use this drug. One must wonder just how far Trainer's and Owner's will go these days to gain an advantage, but I surmise since it has found its way into Baseball, Football, Track and Field, it has found it's way into horseracing in a big way. Making it a big question mark for me how many Roger Clemons or Barry Bonds we have in horseracing today? I would be far more comfortable calling Secretariat great, rather than Ghostzapper who I regard as 1-2 the fastest horses of this supertrainer era.

You claim not to be an expert yet go ahead and make statements like "Veterinarian's today can easily mask drugs to pass tests". You know this because of....? There is virtually no drug that can be "masked". If todays labs test for it, they will find it. The difference between horseracing and human athletics is that there are far more substances considered illegal in horse racing. modern drugs are created in labs and tested for in labs. To think that one side would evolve and the other would not does not make sense to even the uninformed. One of the biggest problems we have in regards to drug testing is that the tests are too strong, picking up at levels far greater than even 10 years ago which leads to positives which are totally inconsequential, especially since the levels are based on outdated testing procedures yet when announced as such, fans howl that we are being too "soft" on "cheaters". The issue which should raise concern is the undetecable or unknown drugs that are supposedly being used. Most of these are in fact known but simply not tested for because of the extraordinary amount of substances that are available. While there most certainly are more and further advanced medications available in current times, there are also much more sophisicated tests available and a much stronger push behind trying to detect illegal meds even if the push is led by questionable tactics and suspect leadership. In the days of past there was neither an ability nor a propensity to look real hard.

According to the Mitchell Report, there’s no test for H.G.H., some, if not many, players will think that they can get away with continuing to use it, or starting to use it. Not all drugs are detectable.

Yes I am no expert in masking agents, but what does that have to do with this discussion? As this is just that... a discussion. It doesn't take much these days to do a little research over the internet. Look horseracing didn't truly start testing until 2006 when Rick Arthur headed a committee in Southern California. Basically horseracing had turned had buried their heads in the sand until a select few starting winning everything in sight. I included below the Feb. 27 congressional hearing on the use of steroids on horseracing's drug policy.