[King Glorious]

My opinion is that the surface didn't get him beaten nor did any premature moves. I thought it was the same move he made at Saratoga and Belmont. The difference was that this wasn't Past the Point and Wanderin Boy he was facing in the stretch. These were two proven top class horses that had a surface that they could take to. Curlin's never looked to be that type that has that quick acceleration that you need to win turf races or synthetic track races since they play like turf. I think that if he was facing the same fields he had faced in NY this year in the BC Classic, he would have won the same way he did those two races. It's sort of like Cigar in 1995/96. He didn't regress at all in 1996. Look at the horses he was facing in 1995. When he faced those same horses in the 1996 Woodward, he won the same way, with the same ease he did in 1995. But when he was facing grade one horses like Skip Away, Louis Quatorze, and Alphabet Soup, those horses weren't as easy to run away from in the lane. Curlin didn't regress this year or move too soon in the BC. He just didn't progress and he faced better horses in the BC.

DaHoss says that his numbers this year are on par with his numbers from last year, minus that BC Classic. I don't know what he would have gotten in the Dubai race but I know that none of his other figures reached the 114 he got last year in the JCGC. They were in the same area though (112 Woodward, 111 JCGC). That's part of the problem though. Generally, we expect horses to improve from their 2yo year to their 3yo year and also from their 3yo year to their 4yo year. How many times do we bemoan the early retirements of our 3yo stars and wonder how much better they would have been as a 4yo? Here, we got a chance to see one continue on and he didn't improve.