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Originally Posted by Bold Brooklynite
There's a cornucopia of wisdom in that little sentence ... especially the "international" part.
Here's a question I'd like to see answered ...
How did The Blood-Horse panel include Phar Lap on the list of 20th Century American greats ... off a single race in Mexico ... but exclude Whisk Broom ... who won the three most difficult races then run in America ... packing weight as high as 139 pounds ... in his three races here?
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I suspect that the answer is a distant cousin to why foreign-based horses routinely win US championships (which is what the Eclipse Awards are) for winning one race in the US, ie the Breeders' Cup. If a horse who is successful in his foreign base comes to North America and wins one race here, that is sufficient evidence for some/many to assume that had the horse run more often, he would have continued to show winning form here just as he or she did back home. There is a deep-running tendency for American racing to have an inferiority complex and generally, we are quick to accept that a good foreign horse is better than our horses. However, horses with in-and-out form in their foreign home base who happen to win a BC event are usually not given Eclipse Awards. This suggests that it's less the act of winning the BC race itself as it is the perception of whether the BC race was indicative of the horse's overall form.
Phar Lap, of course, was a phenomenal success down under and if that victory in Mexico was indicative of how he might have run in North America, it's reasonable - for people who like to do such things - to extrapolate how good he might have been here.
Though classic-placed at 3, Whisk Broom II was not a major player in England prior to his return to the US. His accomplishments in his native land take place over less than a month's time and his Suburban was always tainted by the near-certainty that the record time was wrong by at least two seconds. (This is hardly the horse's fault, but many later references to Whisk Broom II, up until the record was finally broken, involved some reference to it.) Moreover, as racing had just returned to New York that year after disruption that seriously shook up the sport in this country (resulting in many good horses and bloodstock being shipped overseas), there has to be some doubt as to the caliber of horses he met. Contemporary observers did not place him among the pantheon of greats. I believe that these factors led to how he was remembered (or not) by later generations.