Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Phalaris1913
LITF has a serious weakness as a sprinter. He's not terribly fast out of the gate and while he does not technically require that his nose be in front every step of the way, he has not proven that he can run his race if he is very far from the front. He looks tough when he gets 22-second opening quarters, but struggles when faced with 21-and-change against better horses. He's good enough to look like the second coming when he could ship around and run against 3YOs of no particular account, but he's had a little trouble running with the big dogs.
Obviously, the horse himself defrauded no one, but he wasn't, and thus far, isn't, as good as his fans would like to think. He most likely would not have as many fans - nor as glossy of a race record - had he been campaigned in a manner in which he was tested against decent company earlier in his career rather than carefully managed to maximize his race record. It's one of the inherent flaws of paying attention only to the record and not to what it was accomplished against. There were many better sprinters that ran in the US in 2005, but since none of them had the luxury of running against such modest competition for most of the year, their records don't look nearly as good on paper.
I fought this battle last fall and don't expect that anyone who still thinks LITF is all that is going to change their mind reading this now, but I am compelled to speak up.
|
Why would LITF run from far off the pace? He has blazing speed. If a sprinter has blazing speed and always go to the lead or is just off the pace, why would he have to prove that he could run his race from well off the pace? There have been plenty of great sprinters that were always near or on the lead. If you look at LITF's past performanes, he is never further back than a length. He has blazing speed. He has gone :43 and change and still won. LITF is a very versatile horse. I think he could come from 4-5 lengths back if he wanted to, but there would never be a reason for him to be that far back.
The reason LITF was so far back yesterday was because he didn't have it yesterday. Even if you'e right and LITF is not that good of a horse, if he would have been right yesterday he would have at least showed some speed. Even if he was overmatched and was going to get soundly defeated yesterday, he still would have showed some speed before quitting. The horse had absolutely nothing yesterday. That's why he showed no speed. Even in the Breeder's Cup against the best sprinters, LITF was within a length and even took the lead at the quarter pole. I don't think LITF even ran his best in the BC Sprint. He simply had too many races. He was knocked out when he got to the BC Sprint.
It's hard to say exactly how good LITF is. There weren't any great sprinters around last year. I think he was certainly the best sprinter last year. I don't know how he would have done against some of the really good sprinters of the last few years. If LITF was at 100% and would have run in the 2004 BC Sprint, I doubt he would have beaten Speighstown that day.