[quote= My point was that the horse won 10 straight last year and did it all over the country. Like I said previously I don't particularily care for LITF. Tried to beat him everytime last year, and this year. But I can appreciate a horse who is 11 for 14 lifetime. That's no easy task, and especially in the races he was running in.[/QUOTE]
Did you realize that of all the horses that finished behind Lost in the Fog in any graded stakes race in his career, a grand total of five of them went on to win one graded stakes each (at least through late June), only two of which were even as good as G2s? There have, for the record, been somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 graded stakes races since the date of the 2005 Swale for open gender and 3YOs or 3YOS+. His record is as good as it is only - ONLY - because he was so carefully spotted against weak competition. Next year, the King's Bishop might draw horses who end up sweeping the BC Sprint, but in 2005, the horses who took part in the age-restricted sprint stakes simply weren't very good.
Sure, the connections didn't know that. But they had every reason to believe that these were softer spots than the open-age sprints and they knew that their competition for the sprint championship could not run in the races that they were carefully picking. At what time did they think, or even hope, "We might have the best sprinter in the nation?" At that time, they needed to stop running against 3YOs only and go in the many open-age stakes races to which their colt, and his sprint championship rivals, were all eligible. After that point, all they were doing was padding his record by running against patsies, in places where he was safe from having to face actual divisional rivals - doesn't matter if they shipped him to the moon and back, and issued press releases on where he was going.
I realize, unfortunately, that 20 years has passed since Groovy (a horse I didn't even like at the time) was a 3YO running vs. elders. Unfortunately, I'm 20 years closer to being old! Seriously, for the benefit of more recent arrivals to our sport, there has been continued evolution in that time toward the myth that 3YOs are incapable of running safely and effectively against older horses, a trend which resulted in proliferated opportunities for 3YOs to hide in age-restricted company and gather black type and bloat reputations against their fellows. There is no reason that 3YOs can't run against elders by the summer; the only risk to them is a decent chance of getting beat, because usually, better older horses are superior to better 3YOs. But getting beat is the worst thing in the world in an era which would rather see a LITF running unbeaten against restricted company all season than a horse winning and losing while running against the best of his or her division.
It makes for poor sport and arguments. Had LITF been running against elders all along, he almost assuredly would not have any sort of win streak and we wouldn't all be arguing about it.
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