[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind

You can believe all you want but they weren't great horses.

You make an interesting point about Affirmed, but I think his stock was actually elevated because Alydar was around, and his incredible ability to finish ahead of a horse as immensely talented as the mighty Alydar was the true measure of Affirmed. If you are at all confused about this find a film of Alydar's win in the Whitney as he prepped for the Travers ( and then find one of Affirmed making up five lengths on a loose on the lead Sensitive Prince in the final eighth of a mile in the Jim Dandy just a few days later ).

As for Easy Goer and Sunday Silence....you make another interesting point. However, I'm not sure that both horses shouldn't be considered great and they would surely have routinely drowned the likes of Java Gold, Smarmy Jones....and of course King Glorious. Azari was possibly a great 2YO...but so was Devil's Bag. Do you consider him great as well?

As you know, over time, legends grow. To those that were around and know how good Alydar was, they hold Affirmed in much higher regard. But as time goes by, there are fewer and fewer around that know the complete situation and all they rely on are records and videos. If you didn't know anything about the other horses of his day and just watched videos of Affirmed running off with easy victories in the TC, your belief of how good he was would probably be higher than if you watched him eek out narrow victories over Alydar.

As for Easy Goer and Sunday Silence, how great either of them were is up for debate. But I'd bet 4/5 that Easy Goer would be in that top five conversation if there would have been no Sunday Silence because of his record. And I don't think either of them was as good as Java Gold or Smarty Jones. At 10f, I'd grudgingly have to give them the edge over KG but at 7f or 8f, I'll agree with what McCarron said; that they wouldn't catch him. Even at 9f, it might be tough if there wasn't anything up there to keep him company.

With Arazi, I'm not sure how good he was. I don't know if he was a great horse or not. What I do know is that I saw him make the same move in the Derby as he made in the BC and it wasn't a lack of ability that got him beat that day. He was done in by a lack of preparation and by the way his human connections handled him. With him, I thought he was so far ahead of his contemporaries that he could have, under the right circumstances, put some major wins on his record.