[philcski]

Originally Posted by Getaway

Artie Schiller had an excellent turn of foot....but remember his most impressive races were against the 3YO's of 2004 (set the track record in the Jamaica, and looked equally as impressive as Nobiz doing it). He had an excellent 4YO season, but he didn't beat up on the competition like he did as a 3YO. If you throw out his 2004 Breeders cup, where he had a disastrous trip clipping heels and getting stuck behind a wall, he never ran a bad race.

The point I am trying to make is that when you face older horses, it is a whole new ball game. Look at showing up last year in the Man O' War. He ran a good race, but was not ready for that competition. Im sure Tagg feels that he probably won't win the mile, but has a good shot at it next year with a healthy horse, and probably can get an easy GI win at Hollywood just like he did with Showing Up last year.

Artie was one of my personal favorites, but man did he have bad luck in photo finishes!

Originally Posted by parsixfarms

What happened with Showing Up last year (a horse that I think would have had a huge shot in the Mile) illustrates that you often need to strike while the iron's hot. Tagg said that he didn't want to run a 3YO against his elders and would wait to his 4YO season to take a shot at the BC. Then, Showing Up gets hurt in 2007, and he misses a chance to win a Cup race in both years. It's hard enough getting a horse to a race 12 days from now, let alone 12 months from now.

I also think that at this time of year a good 3YO can certainly beat their elders. In the past few weeks, we've seen it done by Curlin, Hard Spun, Panty Raid and Idiot Proof, and the BC Mile is full of 3YO winners. War Chant, Lure, Six Perfections, Ridgewood Pearl and Miesque (the last three of whom were 3YO fillies) come to mind off the top of my head. I'm not saying that NoBiz is in their league, but the notion that we shouldn't run because he's only a 3YO makes little sense to me. (If he's just ducking the race because he knows his horse would not be competitive there, that's another story, but then don't complain that the horse is underappreciated.)

There's about a 0% chance of it happening, but let's cross our fingers that Showing Up comes back from injury 100%. That is one nice horse when right. I don't think people realize how good his Lexington-Derby-Cnl Turf Cup was off of TWO career starts prior.