Smarty Jones first 10 furlongs in the Belmont were fantastic. His last two furlongs have to be the most overrated in the history of the sport. The only reason he "showed so much heart" was cause Birdstone was running so damn slow. Imagine if you had a horse coming at the end just with solid closing fractions of 25.00 instead of 26.42. You then would have had that horse making up an extra ten lengths on Smarty in the stretch and it would have looked like they ran by him while he was standing still. Would anyone be talking about his heart then? I don't want to take anything away from the first 10 furlongs he ran in that race but this idea that he showed so much heart in the final two furlongs is nothing more than an optical illusion created by how slow Birdstone was also going.
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