Quote:
|
Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind
The NBA's Sixth Man awards a player of talent who helps his team. The BC Turf Sprint would award a horse too slow to compete against even mildly talented horses in other races that was the fastest turtle of his group. I don't see the analogy.
I believe in standards, Chuck, and if the BC denotes races for marginal contingents, so marginal in fact that there are a mere smattering of races for that group even contested annually, then they are suggesting, at least to me, that they have no standards. To me it marginalizes their entire product.
I do see a distinction between making $250K supporting races and making these same races $1 Million BC races. I am all for supporting stakes for divisions below championship caliber. I think if the BC is unable to make this distinction they are further marginalizing themselves and their product. I'm all for improving something, but to alter it to its detriment does the opposite, it diminishes itself.
|
Fair enough. I cant say that I agree with you on this but I do get where you are coming from. Though I thought the 6th man analogy was accurate as if he was as talented he would be starting.
I just think that because turf and dirt are so distinctly different that to say a top turf sprinter is not talented enough to compete on dirt is like saying that a horse like GW is not talented enough to compete on the dirt. It wasn't that GW wasnt talented enough, it was he wasn't a dirt horse. There are a thousand Danehill stakes winners and not one of them is on the dirt. It would be hard to fathom that there isn't a horse by Danehill or another top turf sire that would not be a legit turf sprinter. The only reason that there isnt a tradition of top class turf sprinters in this country is that the tracks simply did not write the races. I believe that if you write enough quality stakes you will get a competitive division with talented horses. I have passed on horses at Tattersalles simply because there were no shorter races for them over here and I did not want to be screwed if they did not stretch out. The fact is that the dirt sprint division is been so weak in recent years that you might see some crossover from the turf sprint stakes to the dirt sprint.