Nice win by Flashy Bull
 

good for west point for sticking with him and getting whatever problems he had as a 3 y/o worked out. very nice 4 y/o season so far. powerful move to take the lead, pulls away and guts to hang on. i don't think his toughness and heart was ever a question.

disappointing run by Master Command, just along for the run today. i looked for more from Diamond Stripes also.

I was outside in the pool, trying to find the leak (once again!) Brought out a little '12 TV and ran the cable line out the upstair window to watch the races. All this between the rain drops and constant thunder! Didn't have a very good wagering day until the Foster. Flashy Bull & Magna Grad save it! Oh, by the way...found the leak & patched it. Now just waiting for the water to fill it up and see if the levels stay the same.

Thunder! Clear blue skies in Albany but I had to duck inside to catch the Foster. Very impressive 4yo campaign thus far.

It's nice to see another potential BC Classic runner emerge. Nice win.

And here's a nice story: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/...TS02/706170604

good story thanks for sharing.
Flashy Bull was my favorite horse last year. much to better 4 y/o season to follow.

i'm looking forward to seeing how his 1/2 brother Tame That Tiger (Hold That Tiger) does this year, if he runs. he's a 2 yr old with a nice Crimson Saint x3.

I already posted a longer version of this in the Foster thread, but I don't think Flashy Bull is in any way a BCC contender.
It was a nice win yesterday, and I am happy for the connections, but I don't think he is a 10f horse. I would be socked if he ever wins any 10f G1, let alone the classic.

The horse was given a 105 Beyer. It seems pretty legit to me, which shows how shallow the older horse division really is. It used to take a 105 to win a NW3X allowance. Now it is a G1 horse.

Exactly C MO,

The shape of the game right now is really rewarding those middle of the pack 3YO's that aren't worth anything at stud so they continue on into their 4 and 5 YO campaigns. I'm sure we'll read in a few days that WPT has sold an interest in FLASHY BULL to someone like WinStar and they'll retire him after the end of the year, to go on and produce nothing. Then he will get shipped to some other country for stud duties.

My guess is that it'll be INVASOR vs the 3 YO crop in this year's Classic.

Oh how the game has changed.

Once they figured that he ran better when not running on the "ambulance path," he's run quite well.

Here's a question.......where did it really start? I mean, we used to have good horses, with at least reasonable regularity. Now, it's just an absolute farce.......a masquarade ball if you will. NW3Xs going to the ball dressed as Grade 1 winners and all the misinformed go " oh my. " And some fools bite, and not only buy into these charlatans, but breed their mares to them as well. And then the breed gets just a little worse.....and it goes on and on.

So who were the real initial frauds that started to substantially permeate the breed to really get the ball of mediocrity rolling? Who were these subpar 2YOs or 3YOs that were given absurd stud deals and force fed down the throats of the nouveau riche who wanted to get inside this game and were subsequently fleeced out of their dollars while buying two headed yearlings because they thought it would give them a better chance to win a photo?

I want the names......and I want them now!

That performance didn't crack the TOP 30 in the Beyer department this year. Unreal how bad that race was.

The top Beyer past a mile so far? 115 Fairbanks. LOL

I don't think it was a bunch of frauds or semi-lousy 2 & 3 year olds. I do think the deal made for Secretariat shortly after the Belmont started the movement toward retiring very good horses early for big money.

Maybe if O Phipps had lost the coin flip he would have gotten Secretariat and things would have been different.

Sec was sold BEFORE the TC not after. The boom in stud values traces to the early 80's and the opening up of the international market. No one horse or human is responsible but lets face it, since 2000, how many of the "best" 3yo colts have run on at four, at all? Tiznow did, but honestly with his breeding, no one was screaming for him, even after his BC win. Similarly Albert the Great. Of the "classic" colts most retired w/out even finishing their 3yo campaigns. I am not implying that colts like Point Given, FuPeg or Afleet Alex and Smarty Jones were "horses for the ages" but they were leaders in their class who could have provided top quality racing in the 4up division. PG, Alex and Smarty all retired with "injuries" that did NOT preclude racing again.
At some point in the 80's established, successful racehorses with desireable breeding became to valuable to race.

We can only hope that the best colts of the next few years will actually be geldings, or at best modestly bred entire males. It's the best shot we'll have at high class racing for older horses.

Yes, the Secretariat deal, which was reached before he started racing as a 3yo, was understood as a special situation, where the money was necessary to save the farm, quite literally. But when the syndicate that was put together for Conquistador Cielo, who was not particularly well-bred, for $40million, the floodgates opened.

Many of the financial difficulties of Calumet stemmed from the insane amounts that Lundy 'paid' for lesser lights like Secreto and Mogambo. Risen Star sufferred a minor injury and was retired after the Belmont to cash in. Spend a Buck didn't run at 4, either, although he did run until August.

THe 1980s bloodstock bubble was the beginning of the time when breeding for the sales became more important than breeding for racing. The original Breeders' Cup concept was a response to this trend - to create a race with a big enough purse to tempt owners into keeping their hot 3yo in training until the fall at least, and into their 4yo season at best. It hasn't worked.

I agree and I think two things happened....and one of them was the birth of Storm Cat.

Before Storm Cat was Mr P (who was the sire of Conquistador Cielo) and the big daddy of "priceless" stallions, Northern Dancer. The shift to a commercial approach to breeding took place in the 80's and has continued. When horses like Secretariat were syndicated it was understood that the shareholders were going to raise and race the bulk of their baby "Big Reds." In fact some commercial breeders were NOT permitted to buy shares because of fears about such enerprises hurting Sec's value if there was a perception that folks were "selling off" the Secretariat babies.

put those three names together and you get yourself a hat-trick of a disaster for the racing end of the business.

It's the breeding boom trifecta. Breeding has become the tail that wags the racing dog.

Don't you think that horses like those you mention are most likely going to add to the problem with the breed? Horses that can't even finish their 3YO campaigns are supposed to produce the next crop of horses? The durability of the breed is already in serious jeopardy. Now throw these horses into the mix, that have less than 15 starts (just throwing a general number out there) in their career, and chances are the durability will be weakened even more. Point Given - 13 starts, Smarty Jones - 9 starts, Afleet Alex - 12 starts. Hell, Teuflesberg raced 11 times as a 2YO. At least he seems a like durable animal.

If you believe Jerry Brown......the opposite is happening.

It would be really lovely if he made a cameo here on this specific topic.

I'll give him a call.

robert sangster

This is why I like this forum. There are more actual horsepeople on here that know the game than just a bunch of people that like them cause they are so pretty. I've been bringing up this topic for years now. I remember when Eddington won the Pimlico Special and it just sickened me. The only reason he won it was because every single horse that SHOULD have been there and WOULD have been there had this been the late 80's to the late 90's.....was gone. Either they were retired, injured, or just resting. Yet, he won it and everyone thought all of a sudden that this made him a good horse. U try to tell some people that just because Flashy Bull or Colonial Colony won this race doesn't make them a legit grade one horse and they'll argue that it does. To me, a legitimate grade one horse is one that u could drop into any era and they would be competitive with just about any other horse.

I knew if I hung in there, and slogged through your insane posts, I would eventually uncover a gem.

an absolutely preposterous position

Entertaining never-the-less

Man you guys are really hard on poor old Flashy. Sure he had a really good trip, but did you see the way he moved past a rabbit, a Hawthorne horse, and a need-the-lead horse that didn't have the lead? What a move!! Then he managed to break 13 seconds for the final furlong! What a superstar!

Although his victory may be a bad sign for the sport, it is certainly a good thing for us as handicappers. He is now coming off of 4 straight victories, which means that even if they run him in a legitimate G1 (especially if it is at 10f) he may receive some play at the windows. That is good for us.

Didn't Jerry Bailey say that Eddington was one of the most talented horses he ever rode? :rolleyes:

It would have been worse for the sport had Diamond Stripes won.

Please note that I said Flashy Bull's win was a bad sign for the sport, not bad for the sport. That is very different.
There is nothing wrong with Flashy Bull. He is a nice horse that has now won four races in a row. I always like to see these former Triple Crown trail horses do well at ages four and beyond. I just think the fact that he is now a "G1 winner" is a bit of a joke.
Just out of curiosity, why do you think a Diamond Stripes victory would have been so bad? Wouldn't an undefeated 4yo gelding be kind of interesting?

I should have said a worse "sign" for the sport I guess.

Like most, I'm not thrilled with what is passing for Grade 1 winners. Diamond Stripes is nice and all that but to see a horse as 2nd favorite in a G 1 race who never ran in a stakes vs older horses is, I think, a worse sign. That's just my opinion.

I'm just a very old man who yearns for the old days when the summer handicap races meant something and the fall weight-for-age races determined the champs.

BC Mile and seventy yards is the goal for this horse. BCC is out of the question.

I think I see what you're getting at but I don't quite think this part is relevant. Plenty of horses have been favored or second choices in their initial foray against older horses. Diamond Stripes won his second race, a NW1X, late at Saratoga last summer. I'm not exactly sure which races versus olders he missed while racing and ready.

That's exactly my point. In modern times racing, he missed nothing. The Foster was, I think, the third 9F+ G1 of the year following the Donn and SAH. Pre-Breeders Cup, you would never have seen a horse with his resume prep for a race like this with a single race against n3x competition and come in it arguably worthy of being second choice.

In these times the gap between a sharp improving N3x horse and a competitive GR1 horse is not so large. The ranks are thin at the top.

True. Alas, I lament.

Ain't that the truth.
You don't need to look any further than the aforementioned Flashy Bull so see it.
On April 18th he won an OC 50k/N2X at Aqu, and less than two months later he won the G1 Stephen Foster. That is strange enough, but what really makes it strange is that he really didn't improve at all over those two months. He ran basically the same race on Saturday that he did in that race in April. In that one his effort was good enough to beat allowance horses by four lengths. Saturday it was good enough to win a G1.