When I watched Big Brown win his allowance race to start the year, I came on here and said he was going to win the Florida Derby. I saw a horse that I thought had tremendous ability and potential. His Florida Derby win gave me even more hope that this would be the case. But a funny thing happened. He ran more races. With each succeeding race, I'm less and less impressed by this horse. His four grade one wins and the titles on those races are nice and prove one thing....that he's the unquestioned best of his generation. But this is now August and here we've still got a horse that only running figures in the mid-100's. That's all it takes to be called a really good horse these days? If mid-100's makes him really good, horses like Fabulous Strike and Commentator are first ballot hall of famers. Has the bar been dropped this low? I mean, think about it. He's not even up to the level of the best 3yo's from last year. I think he'd be behind horses like Curlin, Hard Spun, and Street Sense. His numbers aren't even better than Any Given Saturday's or Tiago's. This is really good? What is Indian Blessing then? People are giving him a pass because of the layoff but the horse I saw to open the year was much better than what I saw yesterday and that was off a longer layoff. His 1:10 and change work the other day told me he was plenty fit so I don't buy that as an excuse at all. A really good horse would be able to run figures better than the mid-100's. It wasn't so long ago when we had Smarty Jones, Afleet Alex, Funny Cide, Medaglia d'Oro, Lost in the Fog, even Dynever running figures over 110. Now we get 106 and he's really good? Literally 100's of horses out there over the past couple of years have been faster than him. I think that there is a clear line between being the best and being really good. I am very clear as to which side of that line Big Brown is on. Now, this is not to say that he couldn't jump up and put out a 115 and win huge next out and come back to win the BC Classic. But at this point, I'm inclined to believe that neither of those scenarios is very likely.
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The real horses of the year (1986-2020)
Manila, Java Gold, Alysheba, Sunday Silence, Go for Wand, In Excess, Paseana, Kotashaan, Holy Bull, Cigar, Alphabet Soup, Formal Gold, Skip Away, Artax, Tiznow, Point Given, Azeri, Candy Ride, Smarty Jones, Ghostzapper, Invasor, Curlin, Zenyatta, Zenyatta, Goldikova, Havre de Grace, Wise Dan, Wise Dan, California Chrome, American Pharoah, Arrogate, Gun Runner, Accelerate, Maximum Security, Gamine
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