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Originally Posted by RolloTomasi
Well, the mentality amongst many trainers and owners nowadays is that the BC is the only important event of the year (aside from the Triple Crown). That's why statements like "we'll give him one or two more starts before the Breeder's Cup" can be heard in post-race interviews as early as March. The drive towards a single race late in the year has led to conservative handling to the detriment of the middle of the year and its once prestigious races.
The claim that the BC Classic merely replaces the JCGC as the final top race of the year, is a bit inaccurate. The BC Classic replaces all the fall championship races at Belmont (not to mention other important late season races across the country). The same group of horses used to run in the Whitney-Woodward-Marlboro Cup-JCGC series year in and year out. All of those races have been castrated in terms of distance, field consistency, and field quality. One has outright been eliminated. Analogous situations are apparent in other divisions and at other tracks as well.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather watch these top horses slug it out over the course of a few months and several races to decide who the best horse is as opposed to a single race. Of course, if you're content with Wild Again, Skywalker, Volponi, and Arcangues being BC Classic winners it will be hard to sway your opinion.
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I understand your point, but the bottom line is that owners nowadays are so petrified of losing with their good horses that there would never be a situation in which the "top horses slug it out over the course of a few months," BC or no BC. What the BC does is ENSURE that everyone has to face everyone else eventually, if only for one day, and that's a positive, not a negative. You really think that without the BC, we'd see the top older males facing each other over and over in each Grade I all year long? I don't. I think we'd see the top five or six horses constantly ducking each other in order to get the easiest G-I wins available. The BC says "hey, if you want the ultimate accolades, you've gotta face everyone eventually," and if that relegates the JCGC to a prep race, so be it. That's not ruining racing, it's improving it.