In theory, Rachel Alexandra is supposed to move way up and improve dramatically over her next few races after making a barn change from Hal Wiggins to Steve Asmussen.
It's common sense as far as stats go ... but it's also hard to imagine she could improve that much more when you look at her 3yo form for Hal and that Oaks win in her final start.
I actually think RA was atleast as refreshing as any horse I ever remember in all my time following racing when she was with Wiggins .. and I say that because of two trends that have dominated racing recently.
#1.) The quality horses in almost every division are very low rated performance wise from a historical standpoint.
#2.) The trainer factor has become as unbearably annoying to witness as it's been profitable to follow.
The thing that was so great about RA ... is that she kept running these races that were historically outstanding performances for early season 3yo fillies going long ... and was doing it not for a trainer with too good to be true numbers ... but rather, doing it for a trainer who had comically poor numbers .. bad enough numbers to suggest he was utterly incompetent if you're foolish enough to believe that some of the other guys are taking no advantages.
When RA was with Wiggins ... she was bar none the easiest horse to root for I ever remember .. at least in my mind. I still think she's very easy to root for because you know how real she is.
John Sheriffs is one of my favorite trainers of all-time ... but he has some magic to him. I've never seen a guy better at cranking them up. He had the freakiest stats of all-time with first time starters when he trained for 505 .. and now he's like Frankel-esque post 505.
Zenyatta isn't an easy horse for me to root for at all. A one dimension closer with a perfect style for synthetic .. and a single dirt race that I feel was a little overrated.
RA is way easier to root for of the two.
As for who ran the better race on Saturday ... if Zenyatta was in that race at Belmont Park she still would have been beat by RA even though there were two speeds in there. If RA was at HP against Zenyatta Saturday ... I believe RA would have run terrible on that synthetic because virtually every Asmussen horse going further than 4.5 furlongs runs below their form on it - many way below their form.
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