[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by CSC

I'll try to explain this again why I believe that result was flattering to RA, when you expend energy early on in a race especially when it is not the norm in a horse's profile, It can be construed as valid reason why the winning margin may be skewed. RA ran her style sitting off of 2 horses dueling(her strength) and to her credit she capitalized on it. I will concede that at this stage RA's development is ahead of SB's, after all he was cutting back from a 1 1/2 to 1 1/8th. Hey I am not making excuses for him he and the entire field got beaten rather easily that day, but if the RA backers think she is consistently 10 lengths better than arguably the best 3 yr old colt thus far this year, I think they are very mistaken.

If they ever meet again with an added furlong, with a seasoned and rapidly improving SB on a fairer racetrack with different race dynamics where Summer Bird isn't forced to not run his style, I am extremely confident Rachel Alexandra will not be 10 lengths the better if she indeed is. We will see and I can't wait if and when it happens. Money is the name of the game and I hope my opinion is of the vast minority.

I get what you are saying and in general, I think you are correct. However, after watching Summer Bird's run in the Travers, I think it's a mistake to say he was forced to altar his style in the Haskell. It looks more like that's his new style and he's better at it than his old style was. Sort of the same thing that happened with Mine that Bird in the Derby only in reverse. The Haskell was only his sixth career race. It's hard to say conclusively that a horse with only that many starts actually has a set style of running.