[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

You're nuts.....not that it's such a bad thing.

In defense of Easy Goer, both losses you mention were on wet tracks at Churchill Downs. And, like Alysheba vs. Bet Twice, losing to Sunday Silence was FAR from a disgrace.

I saw King Glorious win the Haskell, and surely you know his career MUCH better than I do, but that Haskell field was hardly spectacular. But, he did drown them.

Easy Goer was a monster.

Again, u are correct. There was nothing disgraceful about EG losses to Sunday Silence. It was simply one great horse beating another great horse. EG doesn't need to be defensed. His record and accomplishments speak for themselves. It's just that little point that bothers me that he lost all three big ones.

For some reason, talking about horses that lost races but weren't disgraced has got me to thinking about Medaglia d'Oro. He was always criticized as being a 9f horse and unable to run 10f. Just because he lost some races to some better horses at 10f doesn't mean he couldn't run it effectively. It took a monster effort by Candy Ride to beat him in the Pacific Classic. It's arguable that Candy Ride was one of the most talented horses of the past 20 years at least. It took a huge effort by Pleasantly Perfect to beat him in Dubai and the effort MDO put in when second in the BC Classic to Pleasantly Perfect, after dueling with Congaree all the way, well, I don't think there are that many horses that would have been able to finish second running that kind of race. I don't know how most people would feel but I think that if I were to rank the top-10 10f horses over the past decade, Pleasantly Perfect would be on that list. So it was no disgrace for MDO to lose those three races to those two horses. Without them being around, he probably wins all three and would be looked at in a totally different light right now.

As for KG's Haskell, he beat nothing at all. He never actually beat any horses of significance in his whole career. Maybe Music Merci was the best he ever beat. I had Samm ask Chris McCarron about KG and how he would have fared against EG and SS when he was on ATRAB. He said that up to a mile, they wouldn't have caught KG because he was too fast but that past that distance, they were probably better horses. I defer to his expertise on the issue, especially considering he rode KG and SS. And I remember asking Gary Stevens before the SA Derby what he thought about KG and he said that if KG had been in the SA Derby, he thought he, and not Sunday Silence, would be the favorite.