[Rupert Pupkin]

It's not by choice that these horses don't run often. With the really good horses, it is often times by choice. With top horses like Bernardini, they are obviously going to give him plenty of time between races and pick their spots.

But if you see that a horse is bought at a 2 year olds in training sale for $70,000 and the horse doesn't run until he is 3 years old, it's not by choice. In 99% of these cases, the connections had the horse in training as a 2 year old and wanted to run the horse as a 2 year old, but the horse got hurt. That's why some of Phalaris' arguments are so silly. If she sees a horse that didn't run until he was a 3 year old and the horse doesn't last, she thinks that they should have run the horse as a 2 year old. she doesn't relize that they couldn't run the horse as a 2 year old. They tried to but the horse got hurt.

This isn't brain surgery. It's not that complicated. Phalaris' argument would be the same as arguing that people who take a lot of sick days from work are sick more often than people that don't take a lot of sick days. Therefore, taking sick days from work must be what is causing these people to get sick. If these people simply did not take sick days, then they wouldn't be sick. This is obviously an absurd argument. Taking sick days is not causing people to get sick. It's the opposite. People being sick is causing them to take sick days.

Some of you guys come up with these ludicrous theories, that you would know were absurd if you had any knowledgs about the business. There is practically nobody in the business who intentionally does not run their horses as 2 year olds. If Bill Mott has a big, long-striding Dynaformer colt who is a late foal and looks like a grass horse, a case like that may be the exception. With a horse like that, they may not try to run the horse as a 2 year old. But with the other 99.9% of horses, the trainers try to run them as 2 year olds. When you see a horse who doesn't make his first start until he is 3, it was not by choice.