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Originally Posted by King Glorious
I don't discriminate against sprinters. I actually think that in an era where the vast majority of races are eight furlongs and under and looking at who the main sires are, it's harder to dominate shorter races than it is longer races. The pool of good runners is deeper, I think.
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That sounds all good in theory but that's not the reality as far as Gamine's campaign goes. She faced fields of 6, 7, and 8 horses in her big wins. Furthermore, despite the notion that American breeding is geared toward speed, Gamine was left untouched early in the Acorn and her main pace rival in the Test was thwarted by a hammerlock from her rider down the backstretch. Gamine also had the run of the race in the Kentucky Oaks yet failed to even threaten to break the race open, never mind capitalize on the ideal setup and win.
She faced a grand total of 7 different Grade 1 winners all year, beating 5 of those.
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Most people give more credit to the horses that do better at the classic distances and I get that. I just don't agree with it. I think if you tell me that the race is 9f, I'm picking Swiss Skydiver to beat her. Anything under that and I'm picking Gamine. I think Gamine has a much better chance of beating Swiss Skydiver at 9f than the other way around.
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You down play the versatility of Swiss Skydiver. The pace numbers for several of her route races were high and she was in the mix or setting the fractions in the majority of those. On the Beyer scale she ran slightly faster (while hounding the same pace rival Gamine later faced in the Test) than Gamine at Oaklawn over 8.5 furlongs in early May...and she wasn't subsequently disqualified. Swiss Skydiver absolutely crushed going 7 furlongs in her debut.
And if history tells us anything, middle distance horses absolutely terrorize sprinters at 7 furlongs more often than not (see the 1991 Deputy Minister replay I posted a couple of weeks back or the history of the Malibu and the La Brea)...at least in a full field on a fair racetrack.