[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by philcski

It WAS a great thing... until they decided to have it at the same place two years in a row with a comically bad surface. It WILL be great again in 2010 at CD.

I'm glad you posted this. The BC is still a great thing. The idea to run it on fake dirt (twice in a row at that) was a bad thing. Horribly bad. But even with that bad decision, how else in the world would we have seen some of the matchups that the BC brought us? We would have never seen Zenyatta vs. Music Note and Cocoa Beach. We wouldn't have seen Curlin vs. the world. Were Goldikova and Conduit going to come over for the Matriarch and Hollywood Turf Cup? Indian Blessing vs. Ventura. Throughout the year, we get the sporadic matchups of one or two of the top horses in a division. The BC is still the only spot where we get usually 3-4 of the top ones all in the same race and we get that for multiple divisions all at the same time. It was and still is the best day of racing that we have. A lot of people are down on it because they say that it de-emphasizes the rest of the year too much and that voters place too much emphasis on it when it comes to voting for champions. While I agree that they do, I say that you have to blame the voters and the ones that campaign the horses for putting the top horses together so few times during the year that the BC is often the only time we get to see them matched up. Blaming the BC for how trainers now campaign their horses is like blaming the Kentucky Derby because more and more trainers are looking at two preps instead of three and more are coming into the race 5-7 weeks out instead of the traditional 3-4. You don't blame the event for the changing attitudes when the event has stayed the same.