[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

Of course people are influenced by personal favorites of their's but hopefully that doesn't cloud their judgement. If you're a serious horseplayer it certainly better not and most likely doesn't. You shouldn't bet horses just because you have some sort of affinity for them and you shouldn't overrate them for the same reason. Hopefully KG realizes that King Glorious and Java Gold weren't great horses.....because they weren't ( and I loved Java Gold as much as any horse I ever saw race ).

I think in the past people had a much better field of comparison than they do these days as horses raced more often and for longer and thus their warts got exposed more readily. For that reason, the few that showed exceptional talent proved it on the racetrack. Horses like Buckpasser ( who was mentioned earlier ) and Dr. Fager left indisputable proof on the racetrack of their massive talents. I think the proponents of some of the paper tigers of recent years should take a good look at the lifetime pps of Foolish Pleasure, a horse hardly considered great, and thus get a good dose of what it must have taken to be placed on that pedestal even 30 short years ago.

Silent Witness was probably at least a very substantial racehorse to have accomplished what he did but I just don't know nearly enough about him to measure his real talent.

I absolutely do think KG and Java Gold were great horses. I think Ghostzapper and Smarty Jones were great horses. I think Lammatarra and Arazi were great horses as well. I didn't watch horses race before 1986 though so I don't think it's fair for me to accurately try to judge horses that ran before then. Sure, I can look over the history books and look at who they faced and beat, how fast they ran and how much weight they carried, how many championships they won, etc and form a pretty educated opinion on them but without having been there when it was happening, I wouldn't try to make the judgement. While I do think the horses that I listed were great horses, I wouldn't ever try to make the argument that they were better than the horses generally regarded as the best ever, horses like Bid or Secretariat or Dr. Fager. My opinion is not based on proven and tested facts as much as it is on limited evidence and belief. What I don't like, however, is the belief that some of the horses we've seen over the past 20 years COULDN'T have done what some of the greats of the past did. It's not fair to the horses to downgrade them because of what the humans have done to the game. Maybe King Glorious couldn't have carried 130+ and set a world record at a mile. But if Dr. Fager had been running today instead of when he was running, he wouldn't ever have gotten the chance to do some of the things he did. If Spectacular Bid was running today, chances are he'd not get a chance to run a 4yo campaign, which is where he showed his complete greatness. So it's about opportunity as well as ability. Today's horses may or may not have some of the ability of the past horses. We'll never know. Take a horse like Bernardini. He was dominant over his peers as a 3yo. He lost to a champion older horse by a length at the end of his 3yo season and every cynic pointed to that as proof that he was overrated. Didn't the great Spectacular Bid as a 3yo lose to the 4yo Affirmed in the 1979 JCGC? Didn't the great Affirmed as a 3yo lose to the 4yo Seattle Slew in the 1978 JCGC (both beaten by Exceller)? The difference was that each of those 3yo's got the chance to continue on as 4yo's an prove their greatness. Sometimes, opportunity and timing can be just as, if not more important than ability. I mention timing because I think that often, perception is important in how a horse is judged. Going back to Affirmed, think about his TC win. Without Alydar around, Affirmed would have streaked to wins of about three, eight, and 13 lengths and not only been a TC winner but a DOMINATING winner. I believe that the perception of just how good he was would be higher under that scenario. Same thing with Easy Goer/Sunday Silence. Without the other around, either of them would have been a runaway TC winner. I believe that had there been no Sunday Silence, people today would be talking about Easy Goer as one of the five best horses of all-time. An undeated 3yo season that included not only a TC sweep but wins in the Gotham, Wood, Travers and four grade one wins against older horses in the Suburban, Whitney, Woodward, and JCGC. I'm sure he'd be mentioned as top five ever. But....there was a Sunday Silence around. Does that mean that Easy Goer's actual talent level wasn't as high as it was? No. He was as good as we thought he was. He just wasn't as good as Sunday Silence. Ability+opportunity+timing.