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Originally Posted by POINTGIVEN1985
ok andy ... well i guess i have alot of learning to do then, because the race i saw was..... early on he was well off the pace and then moved up while i guess i can agree he might have ran harder, for a horse of his caliber, was that trip really considered bad ? i think he got alot worst trip in the donn, he checked badly and was all bottled up in the stretch.
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Invasor, an extremely good horse but not a GREAT horse, has demonstrated an ability to race against his better nature twice and still be successful. He did this in the Pimlico Special and the Whitney, so that while neither performance in result was remarkable, each showed that he had even more ability than a simple win in those races demonstrated.
What you are missing is that premature moves on the backstretch, especially into hot paces ( that collapse as the pace did in the Whitney ), almost certainly result in disaster. For Invasor the results were not only not disasterous they were the best they could be. This is what stamped him as a top horse...and frankly why many of us felt he was easily Bernardini's equal going into the Classic.
These horses are not machines and most have preferred running styles. Invasor was able to perform extremely well, at the highest levels, while racing AGAINST his strengths. When he finally got a situation where the race played into his hands he won the BC Classic against the mistakenly invincible, and supposed superstar, Bernardini.