I believe the only three
 

females to run in the Breeders Cup Classic are Zenyatta and these two....




Obviously Azeri was past her prime some - and had no shot in hell in that great field with Ghostzapper and Pleasantly Perfect. Still ran 5th with a 109 Beyer.

3-year-old filly Jolypha, still elidgible for a non-winners of 3 alw race and making her first lifetime start on dirt, might have been 200/1 on the board if she wasn't coupled in the betting with a pair of solid Bobby Frankel trained older Grade 1 wining males. She gave a great account of herself by running 3rd beaten only 2.5 lengths with a 110 Beyer to the halfway decent horse A. P. Indy.

You can joke about the laughing stock field Zenyatta beat all you want, but she stepped up, ran her race, and was a deserving winner.

And as for the last three females to run in the Triple Crown Series....

* Rachel Alexandra won the Preakness and paid $5.60

* Eight Belles 2nd in the Kentucky Derby at 13/1 odds

* Rags To Riches won the Belmont Stakes and paid $12.60


It really makes you think back to the BC Distaff in '95 .. when Inside Information obliterated the deepest field in the history of the race.

After her race and Cigar's race in the Classic that day ... anyone with the slightest understanding of sound handicapping had to know that II would have certainly won the Classic that day had she been in it.

Yet, her gender... counter to every sound analytical handicapping factor ... was the reason she wouldn't have won had she run in the Classic.

As racing fans .. we've been subjected to a historically embarassing collection of top males the last few years .. but it really has been great to see top females given the chance more often .. and cashing in on the weakness of the males.

That Inside Information win was amazing, an absolute blow-out. Probably right up there with Arazi in terms of most dominating BC wins of all time.

Taking nothing at all from Zenyatta because that was a fantastic race, but it drives me nuts to read some articles declaring this year's Classic field as the "deepest" or "toughest" field.

Yeah - and the field of horses behind II that day was an absolute super group as well.

Obviously they didn't run to their best and II ran out of this world.

No way!!!

Link?


This years Classic field was about the worst ever.

Rip Van Winkle was 3/1 in the betting .. and he's only running a couple lengths faster than 2yo's in Europe going his best distance.

Summer Bird was 3rd choice in the betting .. he never ran on a synthetic track before and had less than ideal turf breeding.

Twice Over was 4th choice in the betting. He ran 3rd even though I thought he was struggling with the turns somewhat and didn't seem comfortable.

I cant for the life of me figure out how people are calling it that. I mean even the best entrant pre race (Summer Bird) was out of his elemant. I guess Rip Van Winkle made it the best classic ever? LOL Its middle of the pack at best.

I don't have time to find them all, but a quote from your hero John Sherriffs:

"That was the biggest moment for me," he said. "The streak was on the line, the fans were there to see her run. A chance for Horse of the Year was on the line. She was running against one of the best Breeders' Cup Classic fields ever assembled. As they say in poker, we were all in."

Blood-horse says this ever year, but I think they suffer from early alzheimer's for the most part.

to support your argument I would not used biased comments from the connections.

You just can't make a blanket assumption like this because we should know by now some horses run to their competition, this was the danger of underestimating Zenyatta prior to the Classic because she ran 90ish beyers in preps. All we know is she runs by Lethal Heat, Life is Sweet the same way she runs by Gio Ponti. We just don't know what Cigar would have done had he run against II earlier in the day or how II would have run at a distance a furlong further on a different type of track.

The females to males thing, I think this will go on for a while, the best males hardly make it to 4 in todays game....ie see Zensational, most have done enough after 8 races.

Pat Biancone sent Triptych in 1986 (6th behind Skywalker)..

Biancobra

says the guys who says zenyatta would beat rachel IF rachel ran in such and such race.

blanket assumption at its best

I didn't realize I was presenting in front of a court of law. It's all over the place..

The big decision leading up to the 2009 Breeders’ Cup was whether Zenyatta would take the easier route in the Ladies Classic, a race she won last year, in her quest for perfection or tackle one of the deepest Classic fields ever assembled.


http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-raci...z-one-and-only

lol good one

Its easy to say after the fact that this field was "weak", but as late as last week, people were making arguments that Rip "would have eclipsed Sea the Stars" and no one know what to expect from Quality Road, Summer Bird or Gio Ponti, etc., on the Pro Ride, so yeah now that they "didn't fire" its easy to say the field was terrible. I don't think you can defend last year's field or even the 2005 field as any better than than this one...

so you go to Steve Haskin, who might as well be the leader of the pretty pony club....I am sure he is a nice guy but he is kind of like the media and Obama, he wont criticize racing.

What do guys like Crist, Beyer, etc say. It was an "ok" field.

BTW who did Inside Information beat in the BC, I remember her biggest competition that year was stablemate Heavenly Prize and that one had a snowball's chance on a sloppy track that day.

Lakeway, Serena's Song

basically no ones i guess

The 1995 Distaff field was pretty stacked.

http://stats.breederscup.com/bcosRac...cfm?race_id=80

NT

Look what Forested did to the Tri payoff which would be unheard of in my opinion with longshots being overbet now-a-days in big events.

What would you like Haskin to do?

I'll give you Serena's Song only because she was a gamer that campaigned hard that won her share of races, but in fairness she also had a hard time beating Flanders and Jewell Princess when it counted, and she wasn't able to beat top males like Smart Strike in the Islin whom Cigar dismantled a race later that yr. A very good horse but she wasn't in the same class of Cigar.

Works both ways doesn't it? RA could have run in the Classic if they chose to. Yes, no?

not be a cheerleader

Don't forget Mariah's Storm (the dam of Giant's Causeway) .. who soundly beat Serena's Song with a 120 Beyer two months earlier.

That was a little before my time. Too young to remember.

I probably said VERY weak before the fact ... and if I didn't ... I assumed it was so obvious that everyone would know.

Calling it weak by past Breeders Cup Classic standards...would be very, very, very kind.


Rip Van Winkle ran 3/5ths of a second faster than 2yo's in his last race .. and that was at his best distance.

Gio Ponti ran twice on Santa Anita's Pro Ride before. He finished 5th behind Cowboy Cal in his most recent try over it in the Strub Stakes.

Quality Road and Summer Bird would have been DOMINANT favorites if the race was run on dirt. It wasn't ... that's why they weren't being bet.



Those two were also weak.

Horses don't run to their competiton.

If you put Zenyatta in with claimers ... she would bury them by a wide margin.

Both her and Life Is Sweet were against unfavorable paces in their preps - they both got more distance to work with, more pace to set them up, and their trainer had them both peaking at the right time.

Running to competition is sillyness. You don't have to bet very long to figure that out.

While it is obvious that Zenyatta would bury a bunch of claimers this is an extreme case mind you, jockies ride differently to different races and competition, it's just impossible to know or say II would have beaten Cigar at a different distance and a different time of the day when the track was drying out because conditions and race dynamics were not identical. It has been said Zenyatta does as much as she needs to win, I would surmise Cigar was also this way, to illustrate this I remember Kent D saying once after a race Cigar beat him in about Bailey on Cigar, he could only wonder if Bailey would finally let Cigar go how fast could he really run, but Bailey's thinking was he was looking at the big picture down the road and he only asked what was required of Cigar to win. Hogwash or sincerity it's up to everyone to decide. But I think Cigar was one of those horses who only did what was required of him to win in 95. Looking at Zenyatta after last weekend, one can see a similarity in the 2 styles where beyerwise they may have looked suspect on the surface.

She was special.

Cigar dominated and blew out fields ... Bailey was whipping and driving him in the Classic when he won as well. Cigar was also a very fast speed figure horse... and a very consistant speed figure horse. His competition certainly wasn't much though .. and some real epic female horses were around during his run of dominance.

Don't listen to jockeys ... they are just as brutal as trainers... if not more.

It may not show in win percentages, but Cannon Shell is like the Albert Einstein of horse trainers... and I try my hardest not to listen to him most of the time.

Like Sightseek, I've seen a lot of articles using superlatives to describe Zenyatta's challengers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/sp...enyatta&st=cse

("As she was awaiting the start of the Breeders’ Cup Classic, against the best male horses in the world at a distance she had never run, did she suddenly not want to race?")

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/mo...ition_in_.html

("So it was Zenyatta against the boys Saturday, a terrific bunch, a 13-horse field, 10 Grade I winners (that means they've had at least one good day).")

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009...n-breeders-cup

("The end is the only place to start when considering the Breeders' Cup card at Santa Anita today. The Classic, with a purse of $5m, is, as the Americans put it, the "deepest" for years, in terms of the sheer number of high-class horses declared to run in the race.")

I saw a few deeper, deepest, strongest ones, too, but I can't find them easily.

Ah, the media. It's not enough that she was the first female to win it, and the first horse to win two different Breeders Cup races, and won Saturday after a pretty sucky start, you have to plump up the field's credentials, too? :)

what were the better fields assembled this year?

They are amazing aren't they.

When you read a lot of that silly stuff you get from the racing press ... it's pretty easy to see why guys like Andy Beyer and Steve Crist are as great as they are.

With those two .. you're talking about guys who are both excellent writers and have a great understanding of the sport in terms of both racing and gambling.

Those two names are company I never have to worry about keeping ... because I couldn't pass a 10th grade English class and only can get hired as a small fry racing writer because of my ability in other areas.

It's the exact opposite with a lot of the guys you see writing on racing ... they're very good writers in a lot of cases ... but they don't really understand racing. Some of them out and out have no idea what they're talking about.

You do also have some that are very good writers/handicappers that have a good understanding of racing .. but have a less than stellar understanding of the betting aspect.

The field Rachel Alexandra crushed in the Haskell stacks up well enough for spots 2 thorugh 4.

Summer Bird was 2nd ... he's obviously a better dirt horse.

Munning was 3rd ... Very nice horse who was in sharp form.

Papa Clem was 4th .. he won the Arkansas Derby over Old Fashioned and Summer Bird. Ran 4th in the Ky Derby.

yea, I would take a horse like Papa Clem over Einstein any day of the week and twice on sunday.

They can run on dirt, 10 furlongs, and I will take the euro over munnings.

I think Papa Clem could have beat Einstein the way he ran on Saturday.

Charlie Weiss might have been able to outrun him.

Right about now, I feel like saying that about you too.

Am I the only one who saw the BC classic and thought that Denman was out of his freaking mind saying what he did?

Her race certainly wasn't a bad one, but man, he went wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy overboard.

I have seen much better performances than that one. Even this year I have!