If I was voting, Gun Runner would be my choice. He meets the criteria. I will have to disagree with you when you say it’s perfectly acceptable for a voter to require a horse to have a full campaign or be on the way to it. It leaves too much room for interpretation as to what’s a full campaign? Is it based on number of races? Number of months in training? If you start your season in May and run through the BC, is that a full campaign but if you start in January and go til July, it isn’t? Was Ghostzapper’s 2004 with four races a complete season? What about the aforementioned Gun Runner? He completed what was planned for his season.
I don’t think I’m saying it should be where everyone thinks like me. But I do think it’s reasonable to expect everyone to follow some basic rules. The first one is eligibility. If you leave off horses that are eligible, I think that’s a problem. I’m ok with valuing a full season over an abbreviated one but I don’t think it makes much sense to not count partial seasons when they run more than other honorees did in full seasons.
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The real horses of the year (1986-2020)
Manila, Java Gold, Alysheba, Sunday Silence, Go for Wand, In Excess, Paseana, Kotashaan, Holy Bull, Cigar, Alphabet Soup, Formal Gold, Skip Away, Artax, Tiznow, Point Given, Azeri, Candy Ride, Smarty Jones, Ghostzapper, Invasor, Curlin, Zenyatta, Zenyatta, Goldikova, Havre de Grace, Wise Dan, Wise Dan, California Chrome, American Pharoah, Arrogate, Gun Runner, Accelerate, Maximum Security, Gamine
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